


Gray Scale 2

by lennoxcontrary



Series: Gray Scale [2]
Category: NCIS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-03-23 12:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 39
Words: 173,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3768739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lennoxcontrary/pseuds/lennoxcontrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part 2.</p><p>When the Reynosas come after Gibbs, the team is forced into dark territory.</p><p>An AU featuring confused agents, mean Feds, and really mean bad guys who do mean bad things. Gratuitous use of favorite recurring characters along with the development of OC characters. The story takes off at the end of Season 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rule 14

On the way home from Langley, Gibbs borrowed his CIA chaffeur's cell to call Abby and forbid her to come to his house. He might never hear from the Caleras again. Or they might come calling with grenade launchers of their own. Until he knew for sure, his place was off-limits to everyone but him.

To make up for it he got up early the next morning and brought her a Caf-Pow in the lab first thing. She hugged him for six solid minutes. That wasn't too surprising. But she didn't say a word the entire time, which was very un-Abby.

When he pulled back there were tears running down her face, silent ones, blurring the mascara under her eyes.

"Hey, Abs," he smiled, laughed a little. "I'm okay."

As it turned out, laughter right then wasn't the smartest move he ever made. But she started talking, all right - like he was the stupidest creature ever to trod the floor of her lab.

"Yeah, Gibbs. _Now._ And _barely._ What's going on? Who's after you? I mean I can guess who's after you, but what happened to make you think they're here? Did they do something? Already?" She looked at him suspiciously while she caught her breath. "Why aren't I allowed at your house? I already went there, you know. To replace the booze."

Ah ha. So they'd drunk all his liquor while he was out of town. And four of them had been around to replace it before he got back.

"Nothing's happened," he shrugged. "But until I know for sure what's going on, no one is allowed at my house except me."

She opened her mouth to protest.

"They're not pushing me out of my house, Abby."

She paused. Anyone who thought they had a prayer of prying an unwilling Gibbs out of his own house better show up in a tank. Telling him to stay safe would be equally useless. But she wasn't totally without weapons of her own. She might not be able to keep him out of danger, but she could have his back - forensically speaking, anyway - as he went charging in.

"Will you give me extra work to make up for it?" _I want to help._

He wiped at one smudged cheek with his thumb. "Count on it."

"Who's _they_ , Gibbs?" She'd shifted her hands down to his left arm and hung on for dear life. "And by that I mean, how do we make them go away?"

"That's what you're going to help me figure out, Abs. You and McGee." He handed her a few pages taken from the folder Kort gave him. "Start with this guy."

"Londono," she said. "You – um. He was adopted, and his brothers were – "

"Yeah, Abby. I know."

"And so does he, now. Because of my report."

She was too still, and Abby was never really still. Not unless she was paralyzed by misery.

"Not your fault, Abby."

He waited until she got it together and nodded back at him.

"You and McGee find out everything you can. I mean everything. Don't let any of the research be traced back to you. Work on it when you have time, between your regular stuff. Bring me what you've got whenever you get it."

She smiled, squeezed his arm again, bounced on her heels.

It felt good to see her - it always did. Abby was solid. Reliable. And so purely honest, in a way none of the rest of them really were, for one reason or another. She'd always struck him as the people equivalent of ironwood - _Lignum vitae_ \- the toughest around. It made him smile just to see it.

"You always know when I've got something, Gibbs," she grinned back.

He kissed her on the cheek and extracted his arm, turning on his heel to walk away. Start the day.

But Gibbs only made it halfway to the door before Abby cut him off and wrapped him up in another hug, one that felt more like a tackle than anything else - miraculously avoiding the worst of his back. He frowned, sure she'd somehow gotten her hands on the medical reports.

This one lasted just a breath. Then she stepped back and stared into his eyes. She wasn't crying now. But she wasn't smiling either. "Abs?"

"I understand, Gibbs. Why you did it. I know - " Her eyes drifted down to the top button on his shirt. "When you lose everything that matters and you're angry. And all you want to do is destroy what's left and you never thought they'd let you get away with it, did you?"

What the hell? He had real work to do. "Abby. I need to get upstairs."

He tried to turn toward the door again, but her hands closed over his shoulders before he'd managed it.

"It was just you before," she went on relentlessly. "When I sent in the report. And that was bad. You know I didn't like it, but I respected it, Gibbs. Because it was _you_. It was your choice. You wanted – you didn't even _try_." Abby's eyes were huge, solemn. Steely. "But now it's the whole team. Tony and Ziva. And Tim. McGee would have gone after you too you know, if he wasn't more dangerous with a network connection than a hundred agents with guns. They'd die for you, Gibbs. They almost did! I know what happened, I mean sort of, with that patrol – "

Gibbs pulled back again, stronger this time, but she hung grimly on. "Abby – "

She steamrolled over him. "But you're going to fight now. You're not going to – " she hesitated, and squeezed his shoulders even tighter. Abby had a very good grip. "Mexico's over. Okay? It's not just you anymore. I know what you lost but you've got – other things now. This time you'll fight," she said firmly. "To stay with us. Right?"

She looked at him and waited. Gibbs never lied to her. Never.

"We're all going to fight, Abby," he said. He just wanted to get out of there. He admired Abby's honesty, sure. That didn't mean he always enjoyed it. "To get the bad guys," he added pointedly.

Because he never lied to her. And the plain truth was that the job was his first priority. Not the team. 

Usually. Almost always.

Because they were here to do a job, a damn important one. A job they would all give their lives for, so how could it not come first? How he felt about them shouldn't matter. Couldn't matter.

Precisely why he hated conversations like this one. Useless questions. Gibbs sighed, and raised his eyebrows at Abby in an _are we done I've got things to do today_ kind of way.

Abby mused it over. _To get the bad guys?_ Well. That wasn't exactly what she'd said. But as long as the end result was the same . . . it was an acceptable compromise. She didn't care about the words - Gibbs was never very good at those anyway. His language was action, what he did. As long as he'd given up the idea of throwing himself on the sword of Mexican justice, aka Paloma' Reynosa's revenge . . .

"Okay," she said, and hugged him again. But only a micro-hug, only for a second.

Then she shoved him out and whirled away. Already working. Because Abby was smart - really smart, not just book smart. And she knew, always, that doing the job and doing it well was the best way to have her team's back. For Abby, there was no 'the job and the team.' For her the job _was_ the team. One could never come before the other.

**x**

Gibbs went from the lab straight up to Vance's office and sat down with the man at his conference table.

Vance gave him a once over. "Looks like you've dropped a few pounds, Gibbs."

"Well thanks."

"No. I mean you should eat a few steaks, man."

Gibbs smiled. "Tell that to Ducky."

"Yeah. And my wife." Vance leaned forward, resting an arm on the table. He and Gibbs didn't have a chit-chat type of relationship, which was fine with him - he could cut to the chase. "So. The Reynosas are pretty busy with the heat they brought on themselves from the kidnapping in Mexico. If our sources within the Mexican government are right, Paloma doesn't have time to worry about you right now. Unfortunately some drug lords are smarter than others, and so far Londono hasn't been stupid enough to draw unwanted attention. You know anything about the Calera cartel yet? Anything current?"

Gibbs sighed. "Not really. Just getting started."

"Think they know Dinozzo or David helped to spring you?"

"Not sure. Maybe not."

"What about security? Is this guy coming up here after you?"

"No idea."

Vance leaned back in his seat a bit, trying to shift to a more comfortable position. Impossible when the topic was this discomforting, but his body never seemed to stop trying. "You do realize how many assassins this guy is supposed to have on his books?"

"Yeah, I've got some idea of that."

"And that's not even counting the death squads."

Gibbs shrugged carelessly. "Doubt I'm so high up on his to-do list I'll get my very own death squad."

Vance shook his head, not feeling Gibbs' lighthearted take on the situation. "And you don't want a safe house. Or a security detail."

"No. No need."

Vance studied him. "Alright. I won't force it on you unless we have evidence that they've followed you back to DC to finish what they started."

"Okay." Like hell.

Vance grinned a little. Gibbs seldom bothered to make himself hard to read, even when he was obviously disregarding orders. Vance had learned not to trouble himself about it unless it involved more of his people than just Gibbs. He wasn't the man's babysitter, after all.

The director relaxed finally, slouching back in his chair. Gibbs had been offered protection and refused it. Official business was over.

"So why'd that kid come after you?"

Gibbs shook his head. "I have no earthly idea."

"Kort wasn't too pleased."

Gibbs frowned. "Kort's the one who set it up."

"No," Vance waved a hand. "He set up springing you from the camp, when everything was supposed to be neat and quiet. I'm talking about the kid deciding to come after the team. When you'd been captured by that patrol."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows. Clueless.

"Kort was not happy." Vance's tone suggested that 'not happy' was an understatement. "I got the impression he didn't want the kid involved in anything violent."

Gibbs rubbed a thumb over his forehead and sighed. "Yeah."

"When we were sure Gray was headed back to rescue you, Kort said, and I quote, 'He usually doesn't.'"

Gibbs looked up. "He usually doesn't?"

"That's what the man said."

Gibbs thought that over, shrugged. "Kort's supervisor at the CIA said something similar. I have no idea, Leon. I asked Gray why he did it. He's not exactly informative on the subject. Or any subject."

Vance took in Gibbs' disgruntled expression and chuckled, deep and low. When Gibbs glared at him the director threw back his head and laughed. Gibbs waited, glare turned ferocious, as his boss got his breath back under control.

But Leon had always been immune to Gibbs' glare. "Well, I know how frustrating it can be to work with someone like that, Gibbs." And then, consolingly, "You've got my sympathies."

Gibbs just kept himself from rolling his eyes. "We done?"

Vance nodded, sobering fast. "I don't care what you put in the report you send to the CIA, but I want a rundown of everything that happened down there, from you and from Dinozzo and David. You can brief me on Monday, when you know more." He raised an eyebrow. "If you survive till Monday."

Gibbs grinned and sauntered out.

**x**

The Caleras didn't come after Gibbs. Not that weekend, anyway.

It was Ducky who figured out why, with just the biographical information Abby gathered on Londono and the thin psychological profile buried in the file they got from Kort.

"It couldn't be more simple," Ducky said. "You see, he doesn't want Gibbs."

They were sitting in Vance's office. Vance, Ducky, Gibbs, Dinozzo, Ziva, and McGee. It was Monday, time for the director's update. But Ducky was the only one who had anything new.

"Doesn't want him?" Tony scoffed. "Londono bought him off the Reynosas and flew to the camp just to meet with Gibbs. He brought along his torture expert, Ducky."

"Ah. Well, yes and no. Remember, Londono is a business man. I think he flew to the camp to interview a federal agent with years of experience in Colombia, Mexico, and the ports of the United States. A fount of useful information. That this agent happened to be Gibbs mattered not at all."

Ziva glanced around the table, then back to the doctor. "Ducky. Gibbs killed the man's family."

"Yes. And to you or me that would be something quite significant. Paloma Reynosa, certainly – " Ducky glanced at Vance. "Erm, well. I would wager that Londono does not harbor any particular resentment against Gibbs. He feels no ties to the old Calera family, or to any other family, for that matter. He does not bother to carry personal grudges. The man has no loyalties, no long term attachments except to his business and political empire. He is cool, methodical, and at the moment, seems to have only two goals. One is courting entry into a business partnership with the Reynosa cartel in Mexico. And the second, expanding his political power and reputation as a legitimate tycoon in South American circles."

Ducky smiled, a little sly. "Paloma went out of her way to hand Gibbs over as a gift to the man because . . . well, she is a rather clever woman."

Gibbs sat back in his chair at that, looking enlightened. Vance made a little "huh" noise and did the same. The three younger agents looked at the expressions on the older men and frowned.

"Care to share?" Tony prompted.

Ducky turned to him energetically, delighted as always to explain. "At first, perhaps, Ms. Reynosa really did want to use Gibbs as a mule. She must have known he would resist, and looked forward to corrupting him. But Franks and Gibbs and the director were able to outsmart her there, using diplomatic pressure to force her and her brother to back off. And it was then that Ms. Reynosa thought of a much better use for Gibbs – one that would give her true power in the future of Mexico's drug trade," Ducky said significantly. "She conjured up evidence in an old cold case, forced Gibbs' return to Mexico, kidnapped him, and sold him to Londono." Ducky smiled as he made his triumphant final point.

Tony glanced at Ziva and McGee. Reassured they were as lost as he was, he looked to Vance and Gibbs.

"What did the doctor say Londono wants?" Vance reminded them.

"First, to expand his illegal business into Mexico, and second, to expand his legitimate wealth and political power in Colombia," McGee said promptly.

"So she sold Gibbs to Londono to curry favor with him," Ziva mused. "She knew that Gibbs would suffer before being killed and she was also able to cement her business relationship with the Calera cartel. That is . . . two birds with one stone, yes?" Ziva looked at Vance a little cockily.

There was a moment of silence.

"And?" Gibbs said.

"Oh." That was Tony. Gibbs tilted his head toward the others, and Tony looked at Tim and Ziva to explain. "She'd cement the business relationship, yeah. That's the carrot. But she got a stick out of the deal too, because she'd also get some leverage over a rival cartel. The second thing Londono wants is political power, remember? He wants to run in legitimate circles . . ." he spread his hands.

"She kept evidence of Gibbs being in Londono's possession," McGee realized. "She could blackmail him with the crime of murdering a federal agent. Just like she used evidence in her father's cold case to blackmail Gi– "

"Precisely," Ducky said. "She thinks she can manipulate her latest rival. But you see, she does not, in fact, understand Roberto Londono. Paloma took a risk in going after Gibbs because her grudge against him is personal – she wants revenge, and is blinded by her hatred for him. She assumes that Londono is driven by similar motives. That he will now pursue Gibbs just as she has. But Roberto Londono is not ruled by passions like revenge. Indeed, he is exceedingly cautious. He wants the information that a man in Gibbs' position can provide, yes. But he has no need to chase Gibbs down to get it. Especially as doing so could link him to a high-profile American crime and risk the protection from American prosecution that he apparently enjoys. There are other ways of getting information, and now that Jethro has escaped his clutches, there are also ways that are much less likely to endanger his political ambitions. He may feel some curiosity about the man who killed his brothers, but I imagine Londono's real reason for coming out to the camp when Gibbs was there was to glean as much of Gibbs' information as he could. He wanted to be sure there would be no need of a repeat of this crime, and he wanted to minimize the number of people who knew what he was up to. So you see, he was not taking a risk, as Paloma Reyonsa thought he was, in order to extract revenge. To his mind, he was actually minimizing risk, gaining a foothold in Mexico from Paloma and valuable information from Gibbs, all at the same time." Ducky smiled appreciatively. "Rather strategic."

"So," Tony frowned, "you're saying Londono is actually more dangerous than Reynosa. But not necessarily to Gibbs."

Ducky beamed at him. "Oh my, yes. This man has the potential to be a true monster. He has methodically taken over the Calera empire and driven all others out. In fact, if Gibbs had not killed the man's adoptive family I suspect he would have taken care of them in his own time. He is ferociously ambitious and displays all of the hallmarks of a control freak. And if I'm not mistaken, Paloma Reynosa had best watch her back. Perhaps she is already aware of the danger he poses, and that is why she wanted to have his involvement in Gibbs' murder in her back pocket . . . hm." The doctor trailed off, pondering the notion.

"So," Ziva put in, steering Ducky back to the point, "in your opinion, Londono will not come after Gibbs."

"Jethro hasn't given him reason to yet. Remember, this is an extremely rational man. The destruction of those drug-making labs was a one time event, and a fly in the ointment for an organization as extensive as the Calera cartel. I do not believe he will seek revenge on that account. But if he identifies you as a true enemy, as someone who is a threat to his financial or political ambitions, I fear he will be dangerous indeed. Paloma Reynosa is an intelligent woman, but she is overconfident and impatient, which leads to mistakes. Beside Roberto Londono she is rather an amateur. One well on her way, most likely, to being swallowed up by a much more fearsome predator."

"So all we have to do is stay out of his hair and the feud's over?" Tony asked. "And this guy even takes care of Paloma for us?"

Gibbs and Vance smirked at each other across the table. It was an _aren't the kids cute_ look.

"Sounds good to me. What are we missing?" That was McGee.

"Rule Fourteen," Gibbs explained. Or was about to.

"You can't get something for nothing," McGee said promptly.

Tony turned to look at his junior agent. "Now how would you know that, probie? I don't even know that rule."

"Abby," McGee replied smugly.

There was a two second pause, a dimwit delay, before he realized that he'd said that out loud.

It would have been fine, if he hadn't reacted. But they were all looking at him, Gibbs included, and McGee could never help himself when people were looking at him. The blood rushed up his face and he was glowing like a homing beacon in three seconds flat.

Ziva raised her eyebrows, suppressed a laugh, and looked away. A none too subtle step out of the fray.

Tony was never very good at getting out of the fray. "Oh-ho! Only one thing lights probie's fire like that!" Dinozzo crowed. "So, Timmy, do tell, what exactly inspired – "

"Hey." Gibbs growled, instead of barked, because they were in the director's office. But it was pretty clear there would be barking later. " _Nothing is free_ , McGee. That is Rule Fourteen." Gibbs eyed him darkly. "And it's as true for Abby as it is for Kort."

"Uh, yes boss," McGee said contritely. He stared at the table, the subject of everyone's scrutiny, until Ziva took mercy.

"Kort is operating only on the fringes of official CIA mandate in this. He wants to take Londono down for some reason of his own," she said slowly. "He does not care about the Agency's reasons for allowing the Calera cartel to operate. And now Gibbs owes him. You think he will not let us stay out of the fight."

Gibbs nodded. "He'll call to collect, when he's ready."

"So all this research into Londono is . . . prep work," Tony ventured, gesturing to the papers spread out on the table. "For when they send the bat signal."

"Yeah, Dinozzo. Prep work."

No, Tony thought. Not buying it. Too many of Gibbs' people had come too close to death in that little patch of jungle, and that wasn't the sort of thing the boss just let go. Either Gibbs thought Kort was going to bring him in on the real action real soon, or Gibbs was prepping for action of his own.

"Well, I vote we wait for Londono to finish wooing Paloma before we take him on," Tony said. "Especially if he eats her at the end of it, like Ducky says. I'm all for a little monster-on-monster action."

Ziva narrowed her eyes in that way that said she thought he was disgusting, and would tell him so, if only they weren't sitting in the director's office, three feet from the director.

Gibbs tossed the psych profile that Ducky gave them onto the table. "You've been spending too much time with Kort."

"True," Tony said. "But I'm not sure I follow."

"Using Londono to get Reynosa. Allowing one of them just a little more power, a little more time, until you get what you want. That's CIA thinking, Dinozzo," Vance said.

"Well," Tony said, "If you do get what you want – "

Gibbs stood up and Tony fell abruptly silent. The boss was practically shooting sparks.

"For every Paloma we get, they kill ten of us, Dinozzo. And more civilians." He turned from the table and stalked out of the room like a launched explosive. "There is no _getting what you want_ from them." He slammed through the door and was gone.

There was unnatural quiet for a moment. Vance looked at them expectantly.

"Um," McGee spoke up. "Abby and I did some digging into the Reynosas too . . ." McGee glanced uncomfortably at the director.

"Spit it out, McGee. I don't think anything you have to say could possibly shock me."

"Pedro Hernandez was under some kind of CIA protection." McGee spoke fast, maybe in hopes that the speed of the confession would lessen the chances of Gibbs ever finding out about it. "He'd been feeding them information about a rival cartel. That's why it was impossible to get him extradited to the US for the murders, even after he was implicated in four deaths – a Marine, an NIS agent, and the wife and daughter of a Marine? There was a lot of pressure to get him. He should have been brought back to trial, but he wasn't. With the material Kort gave us and the extra digging we've been doing we found out that he wasn't really pursued beyond the US border and outside of NIS jurisdiction. Because, well, apparently the CIA wanted him where he was."

Tony ran a hand through his hair, trying to sooth the little tendril of despair creeping up his spine.

But it was endless.

He understood, now, that getting Gibbs out of that camp hadn't solved anything, or even begun anything, really. It was just another spin in the endless circle of the drug war - money and power, revenge and yet more money, all of it floating in an ocean of blood. So rarely the blood of the guilty. It was the civilians who really got shafted. Lives that were forgotten or ignored, or traded away, like nothing, for scraps of information. Gibbs' family for scum like Pedro Hernandez. All those people in the labs for a drug lord's helicopter.

"Where he was?" Ziva said acidly. "Killing Marines and federal agents. And Gibbs' family?" It was clear Ziva put whoever made that decision at the CIA on the same level as Hernandez himself, and she would be more than happy to help them meet the same fate.

Not that he didn't agree. Still, around and around they went, Tony thought. Like a merry-go-round in hell. More enemies, more blood, more dead. Long after someone came along and snuffed him, this war would live on.

They sat in silence around the table until Vance stood to send them on their way.

"Get back to work," he said. "There's plenty to do."


	2. Dinozzo!

"Dinozzo!"

Abby stuck her face about three inches from Tony's. "Grab your gear!"

Tony looked up, very slowly, from his incredible backlog of unopened emails. 

Abby was channeling Gibbs again. That never led to anything good.

"We've got a dead steak at Hamilton's with your name on it. I've already gassed the hearse!"

"Abby, I've got – "

"Nope." She seized his arm and hauled him up, careful to avoid the stitches still in his wrist. "You've had mysterious adventures and terrible near death experiences and we're going out so that you can get drunk and tell me and McGee all about it. Ziva too!"

Across the aisle, Ziva was getting similar treatment from McGee – although the probie was not so stupid as to grab or haul Ziva anywhere. He was blocking her view of the computer screen with her purse, looking off into the distance at the same time. As if it was entirely accidental that he was holding her belongings in midair, right in front of her face.

Quite the strategic thinker, McGoo.

And yet, resistance would be futile. In the end, Tony knew, the geeks always won - this is every jock's first real life lesson. Maybe not in middle school, but eventually, they did win.

Twenty minutes later, Tony was in a pub, sucking the foam off his first beer. "To team Gibbs!" Abby announced proudly, and they clinked glasses.

And then sat there in awkward silence. Team Gibbs to the core - they hadn't talked about any of it yet. Just hugged, when they got back last week, and reassured themselves that they were fine. That everything was okay.

But now they were all sitting here, staring not-quite-okay in the face. Gibbs hadn't reappeared all afternoon. No one had seen him since he'd stormed out of Vance's office.

Fortunately, Abby didn't believe in awkward silences. "So," she said, eyes bouncing between Ziva and Tony. "Spill."

"I'm never going camping again," Tony said promptly.

"You've been camping before?" Tim frowned. "Real camping?"

"Or hiking," Tony continued. "I'm not going to the zoo, or to the nature preserve. I'll not be involved with anything remotely as green as Ralph Nadar."

Abby was laughing, but that last got her protesting too. She considered herself a fan of the Green Party. "Tony!"

Declare his love for nature? Mere days after the jungle swallowed him up and almost forgot to spit him back out? Not likely - not when he was still missing half the skin on his feet. As far as Tony was concerned, a Ferrari and a four-lane highway paved right over the jungle would've greatly improved his entire Colombian experience, probably in direct proportion to his big, black, beautiful carbon footprint.

"Nope," he said. "I'm an _urban_ cowboy, Abby."

They were all laughing now, and it was Tim's turn. The boy scout. Another nature lover, of course. 

"Tony, that's not even - "

"No, Tim. You see," he pulled on a John Travolta drawl like a cowboy tugged down the brim of his hat, " 'Contrary to what you or your daddy think. All cowboys ain't dumb. Some of 'em got smarts real good, like me.' " He smirked, as if he'd just proven the Theory of Relativity through movie quotes. "I may not have multiple degrees, McGeek, but I am smart enough to know that I belong in civilization, where the wildest thing I'll see all night is that fine young lady's cocktail dress." He smiled appreciatively and tipped his drink toward the bar, and they all turned to stare at a woman wearing . . . hardly anything at all.

"Yeeaow." Tony underscored his point.

"Ziva!" Abby turned to her for back up.

"While I am all for clothing, and for responsible stewardship of our natural resources, at the moment I am also partial to environments that feature plumbing," Ziva said. "And hygienic beverages. This bar, for example, is quite nice." And with that she knocked back the last of her beer.

"Exactly," Tony said, and did the same.

"Next round's on me!" Abby leapt up and skipped straight up to the bar. The advantage of drinking on a Monday night - the place was dead.

Tony watched her go. Abby was buying the drinks?

"That's not a good sign," he said. "That never leads to anything good."

"She's on a mission." Tim smiled indulgently, but not at Tony. He was looking after Abby, and his eyes were as soft and gooey as a commercial for chocolate chip cookies.

"Whoa boy," Tony muttered. Ziva had raised an eyebrow and was following the love trail too.

"Abby thinks you need to relax," McGee said. "Celebrate, you know, since you got Gibbs back. And everything's good again." Tim looked at them closely.  _Why isn't everything good again_ , that meant.

"I do need to relax, McGeek. Just last week I was nearly eaten by a snake as big around as your head."

"No way!" Abby had returned, expertly balancing four beers, plunking them down on the table. "What kind?"

"You did not see a snake as big as my head," Tim huffed.

"I know it's hard to believe, Tim, but there are some things in this world that actually are as big as -"

"It was not as big around as either of your inexplicably large heads. But Abby's head . . . " Ziva eyed said head thoughtfully. "I think it may have been about the same diameter. We do not know what kind of snake it was," she added. "Only that it was harmless - "

"Supposedly," Tony said.

" - and not at all afraid of people."

"Cool!" Abby, of course.

"Hey, actually Abs, I meant to tell you I saw a spider out there dressed just like you."

"No way! I love spiders!"

"I know how you do, and you would have loved this one especially." Tony set aside the fact that when he left it, that spider hadn't been in any condition to be loved by anyone. "It was even bigger than McGoo's head, if you can believe it, and it had spiky black hairs all over, and red fangs. And I am not kidding you, it -"

Tony broke off when Abby seized him by the arm and hauled him up out of the seat.

"Tony!" She looked him over, wide-eyed. "Oh my god. I had no idea - nobody told me! Where did it get you? Are you - " She broke off, looked down at his crotch. And stared.

Just when Tony was going to slink back into the safety of the booth, Abby looked up into his eyes. And back at his crotch.

She leaned in close, as if there was a chance in hell that Ziva and Tim would miss what she had to say at this point. Both of them leaned in as well. They were practically a football huddle.

"Are you okay?" she whispered dramatically.

"Yeah?" he whispered back.

Abby let go of his arm to seize hold of his hand, and then she spoke so slowly and clearly Tony had a flash of deja vu, back to Mrs. Breen, in first grade. Her careful instructions about how to blow your nose.

"Are you saying. It did not. Bite you?"

"Nope," he smiled. "Didn't bite me. It was, uh, looking at me kind of like it was thinking about it," Tony said. "And then the kid . . ."

Crap.

" . . took care of it," he winced. She would want to know how, and then he would have to tell her. And Abby would probably not be happy, because in Tony's experience Abby did not approve of crushing wildlife, no matter what color its fangs were.

"Wow."

"Uh-huh." Tony eased back down into the booth, finally, extricating himself slowly. He needn't have bothered - Abby was so bedazzled by his spider story she seemed to have temporarily left the planet.

Tim got up to get the next round of beers, and Abby sank down into his spot in the booth.

She frowned suddenly, alarmed. "Wait. Gray didn't get bitten, did he?"

"Definitely not." Tony had no doubt the kid would pan fry an army of those spiders and eat them for breakfast just for thinking about it. Probably served in a soup made entirely of hot sauce. "Nobody got bitten."

"Wow!" Abby was excited again.

"Yeah . . . "

Tony frowned his Confused Tony face at Ziva, who laughed.

"So," he sipped appreciatively at his fresh beer, "I take it the Abby spider packs a mean punch."

"Well," Abby frowned back. "I wouldn't say they're mean, per se. They're just doing what Abby spiders are meant to do. But of course they are the world's most poisonous."

Tony choked on his beer.

"Genus _Phononeutria fera_ ," Abby nodded sagely. "The wandering spider. Also known as banana spiders, because they've been found in supermarkets all over the world, hiding in big bunches of bananas. That's why you should always scope out strange bananas before you pick them up," she added seriously. "You never know what could be hiding under there."

That sounded . . . vaguely . . .

"Are you serious, Abby?" That was Ziva, accompanied by her own Seriously Incredulous Ziva face.

"Absolutely."

"Well, okay then," Tony muttered, remembering all those beady black eyes, and the sticky blue blood. "I'm glad the kid smushed it then, even with all the blue goo everywhere."

"Well, all spiders have blue blood, Tony," Abby said dismissively. "You just rarely see enough of it to realize it's blue." She frowned. "Even if you were going around regularly smushing spiders, which actually would be mean. But in this specific case it may have been your best option, since the wanderers are really fast, and the bigger it was the more venom it would probably inject, and Phononeutria fera's venom is a neurotoxin that causes loss of muscle control and difficulty breathing," Abby paused briefly to drink, "which without immediate medical attention leads to paralysis and eventual death by asphyxiation. The toxin is also intensely painful and," she grinned a little devilishly at Tony, "it can lead to inflammation, including priapism."

Tony shook his head, finishing his beer. That's what he meant about geeks. They knew real things that were far more horrible than any nightmare Stephen King could dream up, plus they had that totally sadistic sense of humor. Psychological trauma left over from middle school, probably.

"Priapism?" Ziva frowned.

"When it won't go down!" Abby explained cheerfully, and provided a helpful graphic demonstration.

"Oh!" Ziva looked askance at Tony.

"I did not get bitten by the sadistic Abby spider!"

"Yep," Abby carried on merrily. She was a talkative drunk, and Tim was a quiet one, happy just to sit there all night and watch her talk. "In fact, its venom is being studied for use in erectile dysfunction treatments. Isn't that cool? But you'd definitely be dead by now if it bit you. Hey, you should send Gray a thank-you card. And I'll sign it too. I'm thankful!" She paused again to sip at the dwindling pint in front of her. Tony eyed it, trying to remember if it was number three or four.

"Hey, maybe I'll make one instead," she said excitedly. "I can draw P. fera."

"Abby," Tony protested. Totally at sea now, and not just because of the beer. "We don't know where the kid lives. We'll probably never see him again - "

"Pish!" She leaned in close and lowered her voice, like what she was about to say was a state secret. "He _saved_ your _lives_. Like, multiple times." Abby's hands moved around, in a way that might have implied multiplication. "Gibbs is going to do more than send him a thank-you card. But a handmade card to accompany the Gibbs Love is always nice. Do you want me to make you one, too?"

"Gibbs isn't . . . he doesn't have a 'love' vibe going on lately, Abby." Tony said cautiously. "And the kid is - he's -"

Well. Something. Something that carried a gun and killed things in the night. Not a typical winner for Gibbs Love. Though Ziva had done fairly well for awhile there, hadn't she, once she'd stopped killing people quite so regularly. Until of course she'd landed herself a spot in shit's creek that was just slightly upstream from the spot he was currently standing in . . .

"That's because he's mad at you," Abby nodded. At least, Tony thought it was a nod. It might have been a sway. "And he's really mad at him. Gibbs," she added nonsensically. "So he's being unGibbsy. Or maybe it's extraGibbsy." She frowned, momentarily puzzled. But then took up the nodding again. "Because you almost died. See? So what you gotta do is you gotta go talk to him. Remind him you didn't. But first you can write up your drafts," she produced a fancy black calligraphy pen from one of the many zippered pockets on her skirt, pulling it out with a flourish, smiling triumphantly, "for your thank-you notes."

Tony and Ziva blinked at her helplessly.

Resistance was futile.

**x**

Gibbs was staring at Londono's file, not really reading it anymore, when he heard the front door open.

He killed the light and waited under the basement steps with his pistol, watching the intruder's feet descend, fast and loose. The shadowy silhouette was almost a blur as it came into view and Gibbs took aim.

He just about shot Dinozzo in the chest.

Tony sensed him in the unusual spot and turned. Froze seeing the pistol aimed at his heart.

Then the mask came up, and Dinozzo was himself again, relaxed and cheerful and full of shit. "Oh. Hey Boss."

They stood there, just like that, a little longer than was comfortable.

Gibbs lowered the gun and walked stiffly back to his workbench. "You shouldn't be here."

"Right. The ban." Tony chuckled. "You know, I think the bad guys can figure out that the team is close, Boss. Whether or not any of us come over here. Anyway, I'm willing to risk it."

It hovered in the air. _Willing to risk it_.

Of course he was. What hadn't he risked in the last few days? His career, his life, the family he'd made of the team. And his . . . well, Ziva.

Tony walked forward and placed a bottle of bourbon on one of the upper shelves, right next to the other four. "Huh. Guess I'm late to the party."

Gibbs tossed the folder aside and dragged forward a pair of clamps. They had spring hinges and were about due for cleaning and fresh oil.

Tony sat a little to the side and watched his boss dismantle the delicate mechanisms. It was like a visual lullaby, soothing despite the tension between them.

About ten minutes of silent staring on Tony's part and Gibbs spoke up, though his focus never left those springs. "There a reason you're here, Dinozzo?"

Tony knew what he wanted to say, sort of. It had been . . . _on_ his mind wasn't really accurate. It took over, as soon as he knew, and refused to let go. In his downtime, at night, it was there. Staring at him.

The fact that he knew what he wanted to say didn't make it any easier to say it. Tony eyed the row of shiny new bourbon bottles. Hardly even any dust on them. "The fire. Boss."

He stood up and reached over Gibbs' head for a mostly empty jar, dumped the few bolts inside onto the spot where the jar had been, and half-heartedly wiped up the grit inside with his fingers. He pulled down the only bottle with a dent in it and poured an inch.

Not because he wanted a drink, really. But Gibbs hadn't so much as looked at him since he'd lowered his gun.

If nothing else, Tony could at least take comfort in this ritual.

Gibbs followed the careless movement of Dinozzo's hands, smelled the beer already coming off him, and went back to the springs. This was the difficult bit. Slip up when you were removing the casing and the whole thing would fly apart.

Tony didn't really have anything else to say. What else was there? He sipped his glass of bourbon until it was gone. Turned the empty jar around in his hands while Gibbs fiddled with his clamps.

When all of the tiny internal pieces were laid out in a row, and clean, Gibbs reached up for the oil and set it on the bench beside him. Then he braced his forearms on the table and picked up one of the little metal plates.

"I know you're pissed." Tony paused in case there was a denial. But of course there wasn't. "That we came for you. It was my decision, Boss, to take Ziva in there, and the kid." Tony stared at his empty glass. "I just didn't see any other way."

A long time seemed to pass while the man beside him smoothed clear oil into the deep notches stamped on those little plates, concentration on the task before him total.

"Gray probably would have ended up there anyway," Gibbs finally said, talking to the seventh notch. "He's already deep in with Kort." He'd come to that conclusion after a very long weekend of bad nights. Replaying that scream from the clearing. Gibbs shrugged, said frankly, "You used him. Now he'll use you. All part of their game."

Tony stared at Gibbs' profile, fingers tightening around the thick glass in his hands. "But not Ziva."

Gibbs set a flat piece of metal down on a cloth and picked up another that looked just like it.

Tony turned back to the glass in his hands. "Didn't see any other way," he said again, and even to him it sounded lame.

Gibbs set the plate back down on the table. He sat as still as Tony, just looking at his empty hands. But the tension in the air seemed to soak into him, like electricity flooding a live wire.

"Then you should've left it alone."

Tony scoffed. "Yeah."

"You're the leader of the team when I'm not around." Gibbs' voice was hard, and about as cold as Tony'd ever heard it. "They look to you."

"Not for long if I'd let you rot down there."

Gibbs straightened his shoulders, glaring down at the delicate springs, all laid out in pieces before him. "You think this is a popularity contest?" he said quietly. "You got _lucky_. You think she would have come back from it, Dinozzo? If that kid hadn't come for us?"

Of one thing Gibbs was sure. Tony never would have. He'd have seen it as his responsibility, and it would have destroyed him.

Gibbs finally turned to face him then, letting the anger that had lurked beneath the surface show. His words vibrated with it, precise and clipped, every one like a punch. "Even if we'd survived that patrol on our own, you'd be off the team. Probably after I beat the hell out of you. Don't ever put them in danger like that again."

"You – "

"No!" Gibbs roared. "I don't!"

Tony swallowed. And he didn't. Gibbs really didn't. He went off on his own when the shit hit the fan, didn't he? That was the problem.

"So you think she'd be just fine if you disappeared down there forever? And we'd never even _tried_?" He lurched to his feet and leaned toward Gibbs. His body coiled, sudden and utter rage pouring out his throat. "Don't you get what that would do to us? To Abby?" All the fear he'd swallowed, back when they didn't know where Gibbs was. And then in that jungle - they'd come so close to never coming back - 

Tony stopped, straightened, ran a shaky hand through his hair before his voice could crack. He laughed bitterly under Gibbs' bright, watchful glare. "Maybe. Maybe someday we'd hear. If they took the dirtbags down and the CIA swept the camp, maybe Kort would be a nice guy, throw us a bone. Hey, some of your bones! Because Abby would want to _know_. How long do you think it would've taken, huh Boss? What would it be in the end? Organ failure's the easy answer, isn't it? Or blood loss? But who can keep track of them all – there are so many ways to be tortured to death!" He was shouting again. When had that happened? "Yeah, Ziva's better at that kind of thing. I'm sure she could picture it, real easy. You know what? She already was!" Tony flung a hand into the air, literally exploding, words coming so fast he was gulping air. "You think you didn't bring it back, you asshole? That she wasn't reliving it? Wondering if she would be able to get you back the way we got her back? Wondering with every goddamn minute if it would be too late? If you were going through what she went through? Or worse?" The hand slashed through the air again, narrowly missing a shelf.  He couldn't anymore. His mind was all dark, his vision spotty. But he couldn't stop either. It was like a freight train sitting in his chest, heavy and unstoppable. "And you - " His voice wouldn't go as loud as he needed it to. He was shouting as hard as he could, leaning into it, heaving for breath. But it wasn't enough.

Somehow, impossibly, that made him even angrier.

Tony cocked his arm back fast, as far as it would go, and hurled it forward with all the weight of his body. His aim was true – it always was. The jar whipped by Gibbs' ear to hit the steel shovel hung on the wall beyond his head. It shattered to a thousand pieces, blown all to hell, a carpet of glass on the floor. He turned with the momentum of the throw, fist already raised, swiping out. The bottles of bourbon were great heavy dominoes, but they would shatter under the force of the swing -

Gibbs stood and reached out, catching his arm in a savage grip. Tony's fist hovered an inch from the heavy glass.

"Alright," Gibbs said. "Alright."

He grabbed the agent's other arm and walked him back, manhandling him until Tony was next to the ledge he'd been sitting on before, finally pushing the rigid body down into the seat.

Tony breathed deeply, in through the nose out through the mouth, still ragged under the incredible pressure in his chest. He twisted his shoulders sharply, dislodging Gibbs' hands, and the other man stepped back.

Tony might have zoned out for a minute or two.

When he came to, Gibbs was on the other side of the basement with a broom and dustpan, sweeping up the last of the glass. Gibbs emptied the glittering pan into a paper bag and set it by the wastebin. He came over to stand in front of the workbench for a minute, pressing his hands into the wood. Eventually he took two more jars of bolts down and emptied them, filling them both with bourbon. He picked one up and held it in front of Dinozzo.

"You weren't there," Tony said dully.

Gibbs didn't say anything. But he did meet Tony's eyes, and this time, he held them.

That was _I know_.

I know.

Tony felt something loosen in his chest then, something so hard and tight and dark he hadn't even realized it was there.

Gibbs held out the glass until Tony reached up and took it from him. Then he returned to the stool by his worktable and sat there stiffly, turning the jar in his own hands in a circle. They were silent, and the air felt heavy under the weight of the past.

"The casualties from the fire weren't your fault, Dinozzo," Gibbs said at last.

Of course, Tony thought tiredly. It was always the same, when Gibbs came up against some piece of reality he didn't much like. If he couldn't destroy it or arrest it, he ignored it. Just turned around and walked away. Never happened.

It was the same as Gibbs' way of accepting an argument. He moved on. Walked away. Never happened.

It wasn't as if Tony could change the man. Wasn't as if he really wanted to. It just made him tired, sometimes.

"Oh yeah?" His voice was a little scratchy, a little hard. "Whose fault were they?"

Silence.

"Even the evil fuckers they worked for didn't – didn't burn those people." Tony sipped the bourbon he held, wincing at the burn over his raw throat.

"They were civilians in a war zone, Tony." Gibbs said. "Civilians die in wars."

Tony shook his head. The words didn't even register.

"A lot more of them than soldiers on either side, in modern war." Gibbs went on relentlessly, tonelessly. "That's a reality you've got to accept before you go."

Gibbs paused. But Dinozzo was silent.

"That's why it's a last resort. You didn't feel like you had a choice – I get that," Gibbs admitted. 

Gibbs knew his rational arguments weren't penetrating. If he was honest with himself he wasn't really sure there was anything rational to be found here. 'Civilians die in wars.' Was that supposed to make him feel better? If anyone had said that to him after his little girl was killed in this same so-called war . . . well, there'd have been one more casualty to add to the list.

Some things reason just couldn't fix. It was done now, it was what it was, and Dinozzo had to find a way to deal with it.

And Gibbs would at least try to point him in the right direction. Get him moving. Because the enemy they were circling here was dangerous. Good men shot themselves with their own guns over things like this. Just to end this fight. Or drank themselves into an early grave, just to hide from it.

He lifted his eyes to let them run over the man beside him, his second, slumped against a basement stud. "You work your ass off saving lives, Dinozzo," he said. "But you can't win every time."

Tony didn't have the will to shake his head anymore, to protest at how useless that was. He'd been shaking with energy a few minutes ago, blowing himself apart with it. But now he was so drained, like there was nothing left inside. Just a vacuum maybe, a void that he was caving in on.

This was why Dinozzo's - the smart ones, anyway - didn't drink.

"We can never win. It's endless," he said, still hoarse. And all we do is lose more and more.

The ghoulish merry-go-round and the river of blood. Gibbs would know what he meant. Gibbs hadn't won anything with Hernandez, hadn't solved anything. He'd already lost everything that mattered at that point, and even now, even though Hernandez was long dead and it should at least be _over_ , fucking dust in the grave, the fight raged on. Took more. Those people who died in the fire, it took them, and no one could ever win them back.

No one could believe those people would be the last, either.

Gibbs licked his lips, drank the last of his bourbon. He'd been where Tony was now, and it wasn't a good place. In fact, it was so bad he'd made a rule for it. "It seems that way if you let it become your life, Dinozzo. That's why when the job's done, you walk away. You don't and it'll eat you alive."

"Yeah." Right. "So you're gonna walk away from Gray?"

Gibbs tilted the glass in his hand, suppressed the urge to fill it again. Yeah, he wanted to say, I am. That would simplify things. Or, No. He's not the job. A kid's not a job.

But neither of those was really true.

"Job's not done," he said.

The rules weren't there to make you feel good.

Tony kept flashing back to Gray, looking at those photos, all those faces. Searching every one. Lingering over four. He'd been looking for friends, hadn't he. Maybe his family.

Abby damn near hugged the life out of Tony last week, when the team was finally reunited. And she'd sent up a prayer just for him, every single day that they were out in Colombia. She told him so. She'd been there, Tim too, waiting when they were released from Langely. Something solid to welcome them home.

Tony didn't even know if the kid had anyone left to do that. Would Gray have cried if he recognized the last of his family in those pictures? Said anything at all?

Tony had no idea.

He didn't put those people in the labs. Hadn't started the war. But Gibbs was right, before – he was responsible for bringing Ziva into it, and the kid. And he was responsible for the fire. For all that loss. Everything that went down on that mission was down to him.

It was strange now, to remember that moment, back in the jungle, when he'd been sickened as Gibbs killed two men. Two. And mercenaries, at that, not exactly innocent. Killed them with his own hands, to protect the clueless agents watching him, judging him, even though Gibbs had made it instant. Painless.

Tony set the still full jar aside. He already felt sick. When he spoke, his voice wasn't hard anymore. It was . . . nothing. "He knew some of those people. Gray, I mean. If we run into him again, ever work with him on the Calera intel, you should take Ziva with you. Or McGee. Keep me out of it."

Gibbs looked at Tony, puzzled. "He doesn't blame you."

"Oh," Tony laughed emptily. "Oh yeah, he does. You didn't see him, watching it . . ." That was the first time that Tony reached out, tried to help him, and the kid knocked him away. Looked like he wanted to kill him –

"Yeah, Dinozzo," Gibbs said, still staring at Tony. "I did see him. He was upset. But he doesn't blame you. _You_ blame you."

"I was the lead." Tony was calm again now, too exhausted to feel anything. "Like you said. He won't want me arou – "

"Don't give me that crap. The kid's decided to trust you. Don't fuck it up by backing out now."

To trust him?

The boss was rarely this off base. But it did happen.

"Dinozzo - he said he didn't blame you. Any of us. I don't think he's our biggest fan, but he doesn't hold us responsible for the people who died in that fire, either."

Tony looked up slowly. "He told you that?"

Gibbs huffed, a humorless little laugh. "He told all of us. At the debrief."

Tony shook his head. "What – "

"He did recognize some of them." Gibbs studied the yellow basement light, how it slanted through the alcohol cradled in his hand, glowed inside the amber liquid. "I thought he would blame us. I would've, if those were my people in there."

He didn't look at Tony.

_The kid's decided to trust you. Don't fuck it up by backing out now . . ._

Gibbs could say the same about himself, a thousand times over. Always easiest to give the advice you're most in need of. "In the debrief they asked him if he had anything to say about the fire. They asked him, Dinozzo, point blank. You remember that?"

Tony frowned. "He said – something about the guards . . ."

"Yeah," Gibbs said, grim. "He said he didn't think there were any guards among the dead."

"So?"

"So there would've been guards in the labs, Dinozzo. But they got out. All of them."

Tony just stared at him.

"They left the workers to die in there, Tony. The guards didn't bother to release them."

Dinozzo just kept staring at him. Gibbs stared right back.

"Or maybe they locked them in. The chaos of a fire would be the perfect opportunity to lift a few grand worth of coke, right? A fortune. The guards could say it was lost in the fire . . . there'd be no one left alive to say anything different." Gibbs looked away from the horror in Tony's eyes, ran a hand across his mouth. "Your grenades started that fire. But whatever it was that trapped those people in there, the fact that so many didn't make it out - that was deliberate. And Gray blames the guards. The cartel. Londono maybe. Not you."

Not me.

Tony searched his face, looking for the truth in it, or the lie. Gibbs had lied to him before, about some things. Hadn't said a word about a whole lot of other things. If the boss thought it was for the best -

Gibbs returned his gaze steadily.

Finally Dinozzo slumped a little, lifted a hand and ran it through his hair.

He was so tired.

Gibbs gestured toward the back corner of the basement. "It's late. You can take the cot."

"No," Tony stood up. "I'm going home."

"You're drunk."

"Yeah. That's why I took a cab."

Tony was already at the first step when he paused and looked back. There was something else nagging at him.

The boss's still profile was lit by the stark work light at his bench, the room all around him cast in shadows.

He looked incredibly alone. But that was how the man seemed to prefer it.

Even so, he always took care of the team. And Gibbs had a different relationship with her, about the job . . . maybe she would talk to him.

"Gibbs."

Gibbs turned to face him.

Tony's hand tightened on the railing in front of him. "You know Kort's got something on Ziva?"

Gibbs didn't look surprised, exactly. But his gaze was intense.

"It came up at that first meeting. Something to do with whatever she was into with Mossad. Something . . . " illegal wrong dark no " . . . she'd rather keep quiet."

He nodded at the warning and Tony was out of there.

Gibbs looked at the dismantled hinges in front of him as the stairs creaked, and then the floorboards overhead. He listened when the front door finally closed above him, and everything was silent.

* * *

 

 _a/n: "Contrary to what you or your daddy think. All cowboys ain't dumb. Some of 'em got smarts real good, like me," is from_ Urban Cowboy _._

_Rule Eleven - "when the job's done, walk away" - is a real Gibbs Rule._

_The previous chapter's Rule Fourteen? Not so much. Canon Rule Fourteen remains a mystery._

_"Resistance is futile," is from_ Star Trek.


	3. Good Talk

There was a dead body the next day, a petty officer. Turned out to be an accidental death.

The team's collective hangover was thankful.

The rest of the week was a string of muggings and assaults. That turned out to be a Marine with a testosterone problem, going off the deep end. Then a suicide. Then an overdose. Weapons that had never been reported missing, showing up on the black market. Then a murder, drug related. The drug crime was more personal for everyone now, except for Gibbs, who had probably taken them personally all along. Then another dead body, hit-and-run manslaughter. Followed by a murder . . .

Two months passed in total normalcy. Gibbs was back to being Gibbs. The team was back to the way it was before. Tentative, at first, but with each passing day they grew more solid. Somehow, though none of the rest of the team was quite sure how, Tony had fixed it.

And then Gibbs answered his cell and got Kort.

It was 0630. He'd just walked into the office, where they were deep into a missing person case going nowhere, and he only had a half cup of coffee in him. Not nearly enough for - 

"Gibbs, it's Kort. Are you in DC?"

"Yeah," Gibbs said slowly. Cautiously.

His agents looked up from their desks, watched as he sat down in his chair. Cautious was weird.

"Good. Gray got picked up last night, I need you to bail him out. He's at the Seventh District Station."

Kort's voice was delayed, like he was talking from the other side of the world.

"Gibbs?"

"Yeah?" Even more cautious this time.

"He's in the system as your son, under the name Alan Gibbs. Bail is five hundred or a thousand, something like that. You'll get reimbursed."

Silence.

"Gibbs?"

"Kort." His agents sat up so fast their chairs rattled. "Where are _you_?"

"Africa. Just get him out, alright?" Kort said irritably. "He's already going to be late and it's only the second week of school." And then he hung up.

Gibbs glared at the phone. The man hadn't even said that last bit with the slightest hint of sarcasm. "I'm going to jail," he stood up, "to bail out Gray."

Mouths opened. "I don't know anything else." More mouths, flapping. "No, you can't come with me. Dinozzo, work the case."

He stopped on the way to the Seventh for more coffee and was still standing at the sergeant's desk by 0655.

"Here to post bail for Alan Gibbs." He slid his ID and credit card through the slot beneath the bulletproof glass and got forms to fill out in return. And a receipt. That, he would keep.

The burly desk sarge gave his NCIS ID another once over before sliding it back to him, a little friendlier than he'd been before. Like an ice cube taken out of deep freeze and tossed into a snow bank, the change was marginal. "We'll have him out in about an hour," he said gruffly. "That's as fast as it gets around here."

The man peered at him challengingly, as if he expected Gibbs to throw a fit. When Gibbs raised a calm eyebrow, he won another nugget.

"Your kid went over a car last night, got a little banged up. Said he was fine," the sergeant bent back to his paperwork. "But you might want to have him checked out."

His kid. Went "over" a car.

Gibbs nodded and sat down in one of the plastic chairs scattered around the room. He was pretty sure they were the same model they had in his high school principal's office. In his four years at Stillwater High, Gibbs became very familiar with those chairs. He was a middle-aged man before he'd spent a night in lockup, though. When Lara Macy pegged Gibbs for a murder, threw him in jail, and interrogated him like the smart, bulldog investigator she was.

He'd been angry that she let him walk away. Enraged that nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to. Not his homecoming from Desert Storm, which he should have found in Shannon's arms. Not the cops, who were supposed to catch the bastard who took his family from him. Not even killing Hernandez. Because Allison Hart was right, of course. That should have been the bullet that ended him. It did end his career in the Marines, about the only positive thing he had left in his life at that point. But it didn't do what it was supposed to do - what he hadn't had the courage, or maybe the insanity, to do himself. It hadn't ended him.

Because Lara Macy let him walk away.

Sitting there, on the other side of lockup and twenty years on, he was startled to realize that his anger at her had faded to nothing. He'd always known it was irrational, but his rage had festered for decades all the same. Her death at Dean's hands hadn't helped at all - it only made him more angry. If she'd thrown away the key the way she should have twenty years ago she would still be alive today.

But it had been her choice, hadn't it? She'd done what she felt she had to do, what she thought was right, for whatever reason. Like Gibbs, with Hernandez, and Dinozzo, chasing Ziva to Somalia. Like the whole team, when they'd come for him, selling their souls to Kort, basically, and gambling the life of a boy. It came down to choices, priorities . . . the people in their lives they would break all the rules for, throw everything away to keep safe.

He waited an hour and fifteen minutes, staring at the cinderblock walls. They were painted a dull cream, and took on an unpleasant blue tint under the buzzing florescent lights. Gibbs ignored the morning flow of people in and out of the station, passing the time instead by contemplating the well-intentioned path to hell that had landed him, of all people, as Kort's errand boy.

They'd chosen to break the rules, alright. And there was always a price to pay.

Finally Gray appeared, ushered by a uniformed guard through a steel door. Gibbs watched the desk sarge shove a tray with a cell phone and a cheap digital watch through the window. The kid walked over and slipped them into his pockets. If he was injured there was no obvious sign of it. He was draped in a dirty white shirt and dark, loose jeans, dull gray sneakers on his feet. Hard to tell if they were old or supposed to be that color.

Were those clothes cool? Or could he not afford better?

His hair was shorter than it was before, a little neater. Gibbs idly wondered if the kid had grown at all, gotten any taller. He'd forgotten if that was the sort of thing you could see after two months, and he couldn't judge from this angle anyway.

Gibbs stood when he approached. "Alan?"

"Pops."

Gibbs jerked his head toward the door and they walked out of the station together, blinking in the bright morning sun. He headed toward the parking lot. Gray walked silently beside him. They were halfway to the car before Gibbs spoke. "So. Said they had you on evading arrest. Assault. And my favorite, possession of cocaine."

No response. He was talking to the wind. 

A more direct approach? "This the first time you've been arrested?"

"Depends on who you ask."

It took a second for that to register. "CIA wipes the record, huh? Every time?"

Gray grinned a little, but not in any sort of happy way, and not at Gibbs.

They'd reached the car. Gibbs stopped by the bumper. "You guilty on the possession?"

But Gray kept walking, like he'd never intended to stop. "The daddy part's a name only thing, Agent Gibbs," he said, passing him by. "You don't have to act it out."

Was the kid trying to make him angry? "Hey!"

Gray stopped, slowly turned back.

"I don't care who you are or what you did for me." Gibbs said it calmly, but with plenty of conviction. "I'm not going to endlessly bail out an addict. Or a dealer."

Gray looked him up and down, assessing - like a navigator in a strange land, trying to identify the species. "Don't use," he said slowly. Unsure if that was what Gibbs was looking for? "Don't sell it."

Gibbs waited for the rest, and Gray shrugged. "Cops showed and a bunch of guys threw away what they were holding. Charged everyone there with possession."

Gibbs studied his face carefully, looking for the lie. He had a feeling he wouldn't necessarily see it on this kid, whether it was there or not. "And the assault?"

"There was a fight. Cops charged everybody with fighting."

"Evading?"

"Yeah," Gray said blandly, looking out across the lot. "I ran. Tried to."

The kid looked tired, Gibbs realized. Really tired. The skin stretched tight over his face, sharp over the bones, and Gibbs wondered if he'd lost weight since the jungle. The way he wore his clothes it was hard to tell.

Maybe it was stupid to ask, but Gibbs had gotten out of the habit of assuming things. "Why'd you run?"

Gray looked Gibbs over again, this time with something closer to concern. Wondering if his designated bailor had the IQ to carry out the job?

"Let me guess," Gibbs said. "Street cred."

Gray frowned. "Don't ever want to go in." A pause, watching an unmarked cop car roll by. And then a few extra words, sarcastic, soft. "It's not fun."

Gibbs nodded. His most recent stay in Mexico, most of it spent locked in federal holding, had not been fun by any means. But he didn't say anything, didn't want to break the spell of extra words. They stood there in the sun, the quiet broken only by the shush of traffic outside the lot. And then, out of the blue, he got more.

"I don't like it." Gray glanced at him. "The cells."

The kid's voice was indifferent. But the words - a warning. A plea.

Gibbs' breathing shifted, the way it would approaching a wild animal, or a terrified child. But already Gray wasn't looking at him, was physically leaning away -  instantly regretting that great bombshell. That he didn't like getting arrested. That he needed Gibbs to come and get him out if he was ever locked up again.

Given Gray's conversational habits it was probably the understatement of the century anyway. The kid must loathe holding cells. Gibbs turned his mind to keeping the conversation going. Gray was still standing there. Answering questions. And that flash of vulnerability - a miracle.

Because he was tired? Hurt? Probably in part because of the threat Gibbs made about not coming around to bail him out under certain conditions, like cyclic drug busts.

It was a bit much to lay down the law after what Gibbs owed Gray, he was well aware of that. Gibbs gave a mental shrug. So he was a bastard. Kid knew that already. "You alright, Gray?"

Gray's face drifted from indifference to puzzlement. "Yeah?"

Gibbs nodded toward the station house. "Cop in there said you went over a car."

"Oh. Yeah. Don't usually catch me." He yawned. Was he eyeing Gibbs' coffee? "The car slowed me down."

Don't usually catch me. Gibbs tried to feel his way. "We have a doctor on site at NCIS. He could see you without any paperwork."

Gray's face relaxed into something that was just a little too smooth. "No need."

Gibbs seriously doubted that. He eyed Gray's torso, wondering what was hiding under that shirt. 

The kid was turning away again.

"I can give you a ride," Gibbs offered casually. "Where're you headed?"

Gray raised a hand without even breaking stride, voice already fading. "It's cool."

About to disappear again.

"Hey, wait up a second."

Gray turned back, impatient. Gibbs walked a few paces from the car, closing some of the distance between them. "The Seventh District isn't anywhere near Clifton Park."

Gray looked pointedly at his wristwatch.

"You don't live around here," Gibbs said carefully, watching his face. Looking for the tell.

"Is that a question?" Gray's lips ghosted into that faint cold smile.

"I'm betting you live closer to Clifton," Gibbs acknowledged. "You had less than an hour to get there when you first met up with my agents. And you arrived and left on your own." Gibbs sipped his coffee.

"That's good investigating, Agent Gibbs. You could do this professionally."

"So let me give you a ride. That park's on the other end of the city. And Kort already scolded me about you being late for school."

Gray looked at him, really, seriously, for the first time that day. "No."

He continued on his way.

God, it shouldn't be this hard. "I could drop you somewhere neutral," Gibbs called to his back.

"No."

"Hey, Gray."

The kid turned with an expression closing in on pissed-off.

"Is Mateo alright?"

And the look went from pissed to . . . something else.

"Yeah." Gray hesitated. "He's good."

You can't force trust. Gibbs finally let him walk away.

**x**

When he got back to headquarters his agents were standing in front of the flat screen, the missing petty officer's face up on it and pretty much nothing else, since they hadn't caught a break yet.

They fell silent when Gibbs came in. Too curious to pretend to work. Too smart to actually ask.

"Dinozzo, report."

"Still no activity on the cell phone or accounts. We found and called the high school friends to see if they've had any contact. No answer at home, none at work yet either. They're all in the Midwest so they're probably still in their cars, commuting in. We're calling the offices again when they open for the day. Where's the kid?"

Gibbs sighed. Better to tell them upfront, if they were ever going to get back to work. Anyway, he reminded himself, they were already involved. It was, he grimaced, _their_ fight now. Like Abby said. All of theirs.

"On his way to school, supposedly."

McGee almost fell over. Questions about Gray - they were practically personal. Gibbs was going to answer them?

They moved in closer to stand by his desk.

"What'd they bring him in for?" Tony ventured. 

"Possession of cocaine, assault, evading arrest."

Gibbs looked up and caught the worry in their eyes, edging toward betrayal. They didn't want Gray to be a dealer.

He shrugged. "Said he was with people who were carrying but he doesn't deal or use. Also said there was a fight but he wasn't in it." Gibbs smiled a little and slouched back into his chair. "Didn't deny running away."

Dinozzo recovered first. "Huh. And they caught him. DC Metro? I'm officially impressed."

"They swiped him with a cruiser to slow him down."

"Is he alright?" Ziva frowned.

Gibbs absently tapped the papers on his desk with his fingers. "Looked fine."

Not really an answer. Gray had mostly looked fine before, even when he was wounded, until the fever set in. And the truth was the kid looked worn out. But that might just be from spending the night in lockup . . .

"What'd you get off him, Boss?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Didn't get anything. Offered him a ride but he doesn't want us to know where he lives. Sounds like he's been brought in before but the agency wipes the record of it, so he has no rap sheet. Kort claims he's in Africa right now, which explains why I got tapped to go in and post bail." Gibbs hesitated, straightening his back as he did to cover it. "Gray is in the system as Alan Gibbs."

"As your son," Ziva said slowly.

"Yeah."

McGee fixed on something else. "Boss, that would be so . . . I mean – that's – "

"Yeah, McGee. I know."

"They must have set that up weeks ago, at least!" McGee went on. "It would take that long to make sure that every system station-intake uses - "

"Not just a one-time thing then," Tony cut in.

"I doubt it, Dinozzo," Gibbs said.

Tony studied Gibbs' calm face.

Gray couldn't be . . . could he? The boss would've never let him go. Not to the debriefing. Certainly not out of the debriefing with Kort, of all people. And not skipping off to school after he'd spent the night in jail. Gibbs would've known from the first moment he laid eyes on the kid back in Colombia. Wouldn't he?

"He's not . . ." Dinozzo's eyes sort of wandered around the bullpen while he plucked up his courage, and got the question stumbling along again. "I mean, do you think . . . not that it's - but obviously, I mean, it could be - "

Gibbs actually rolled his eyes. "He's not my son, Tony."

"Oh. Ah, good."

His agents shuffled uncomfortably, like the personal question was a speed bump the conversation needed to heave itself over.

Tony got a far-off look. "But no wonder he wouldn't let us get his prints. He's been hauled in before."

"You think he was in the system as Gibbs' son before we even went to Colombia with him?" Ziva said doubtfully.

"No," Tony said. "But if we'd taken his prints and logged them in a federal database as an unknown person of interest? Red flag, if whoever hacks his records out of the system didn't find and wipe that specific entry before his next arrest. Gibbs was able to get him out this morning without a fuss because they got no hits on his prints. Gray wants to stay out of the system entirely so that when he does go in he looks clean."

Tim was frustrated by the failure of technology to provide the answers they were looking for. "Well he's been good at staying under the radar so far. Without more information on his background no one can find out who he really is, including us."

"We could show his photo around some schools near Clifton Park," Tony suggested. "See what pops up. If he's really enrolled around there we'll find him."

Gibbs rubbed his forehead and leaned forward to rest his forearms on the desk. "He doesn't want us to know where he lives," he said again.

McGee frowned. "Why not?"

"And who cares?" Tony added.

"He doesn't want us to know in case Gibbs is captured and tortured for information," Ziva said promptly.

Tim looked at her incredulously, but Gibbs nodded. "She's right."

"But that's – "

"It's obviously not out of the question," Gibbs said mildly. "Given who we're dealing with. Anyway, he's earned the space. If he wants us to know he'll tell us."

They all took that to mean Gibbs was confident that one day, he would.

Tony frowned. "You believe him? About the possession?"

Gibbs looked up at his senior agent. Tony didn't screw around with drugs, or drug dealers. He'd been too close to what they could do to people, as a cop and as a son. "Yeah, I do."

Dinozzo relaxed a little further. "So what's he doing getting arrested then? He's got to be hanging out with dealers," he said thoughtfully. "Once, maybe, is accidental. But more than once? And they went through all the hacker trouble to make sure you'd be in a position to bail him out. Must have been prepared for it to happen."

"Yeah," Gibbs tapped his fingers again. "Good question." He paused. "Course there's something else that doesn't make sense."

He waited for his agents to fill in the blank. He'd been the boss too long to answer all the questions for them, even if the dynamics on this Calera thing were a little different from the norm.

"Uh . . . why the CIA is hacking for Kort's personal contact?" Tim guessed. Gibbs didn't respond, which meant wrong. Unless there was a cyber crime related to one of his cases, the boss's interests did not extend to hacking.

"Kort said the CIA had no connection to Gray. But the CIA is covering for him," Ziva said.

Gibbs leaned on an elbow and used his index finger to massage some of the tension out of his forehead. Another wrong. Gibbs bet the Agency was allowing Kort to color outside the lines on this one simply because a Calera bust could eventually be lucrative, both monetarily and in terms of CIA positioning on the region's chessboard. And anyway, the conclusion was wrong. The CIA wasn't covering for Gray. Kort was covering for Gray, and using the CIA to do it.

They had two more seconds.

"Kort," Tony realized. "It's Kort driving the boat."

Gibbs straightened and nodded. "Kort."

Tim and Ziva frowned into the distance, shifting their focus from what had happened today to the big picture.

It wasn't the CIA that they needed to figure out in order to understand this situation. It was Kort.

"He said Gray has no connection to the CIA. But what is Kort's connection to Gray, then?" Ziva pondered.

"Kort worked in South America before he was assigned to La Grenouille. Maybe the kid helped Kort out the same way he helped us out," Tim said.

"Kid would've been pretty young," Tony said. "Younger, I mean. Kort worked the Frog for years."

"According to the State Department they start young in the cartels," McGee pointed out.

"They do," Gibbs said. "But this goes beyond paying back some help."

"Gray helped Kort and Kort got . . . attached?" Ziva proposed. Her voice was doubtful even as the words formed.

"There's some connection between them," Gibbs agreed. "But attached is – I don't know, adopting the kid, or arranging for someone else to do it. Setting him up with a nice life here or in Colombia. This is something else."

They all tried to turn their minds to the Kort puzzle, ignoring the living, breathing Gibbs puzzle that was right in front of them. But he was acting kind of weird, all this back and forth, it was like -

"Partners," Tony said.

They all looked at him.

"They're like partners," Tony insisted. "At that debriefing – "

Gibbs nodded, thoughtful. "They are," he said.

Ziva shook her head. "Gray is a valuable informant, but a child – "

"C'mon Ziva. He gets it done. And he's obviously been doing it for awhile." Tony nodded at McGee, acknowledging his earlier point. "They're working together."

"If you are correct it is still odd that Kort would take on such a 'partner,' even in this one case. Kort does not work closely with anyone," Ziva insisted. "Why ally himself with a boy who is so vulnerable? Today he had to call Gibbs to bail his partner out, for god's sake!"

"I agree," Gibbs said. "We're missing something. Their connection isn't just a working one - it's personal. Which is why we're gonna dig into Kort."

"Ugh," Tony groaned. He actually looked like he was in pain.

"McGee," Gibbs said. "Kort was informed immediately when you and Abby hacked into the CIA's satellite network. Would he know if you went into other files? Like his own personnel record?"

McGee got that tight, faraway look . . . not the one where he was figuring out the answer. The one where he was translating what he knew into something Gibbs would understand. "It depends on the file. Kort probably knew we went into the Colombian images because he was already monitoring them. They were hot – uh, new – and if he already knew Gibbs was headed to Camp Six he might have been waiting for us to access them. Files that aren't being watched so closely wouldn't get us the same kind of attention." McGee frowned. "Probably."

Gibbs nodded. "I want to find out as much as we can before we tip our hand that we're looking. What about files that other agencies might keep on him?"

"Well," McGee considered, "Whether or not they detect us depends on that agency's protections. But most aren't as paranoid as the CIA. And even if they do realize we're there, Kort would probably only find out if a friend at whatever agency we infiltrated informed him."

Tony snorted at the idea. Kort with friends? "So there's no way he'd find out."

Gibbs nodded. Kort didn't go out of his way to endear himself to other agents, that was for sure. "Look into what the FBI has on him, if anything. Try Immigration too. Do your best not to get caught."

The boss turned to Ziva. "I want to know what he was doing in Colombia before the Frog, and I want to know his personal history."

She nodded. "I can ask my contacts at the CIA. But there is no guarantee that word would not get back to him."

"Know anyone at MI6?"

Ziva smiled slowly. She loved it when Gibbs was devious. "I do."

"Start there. If he was ever as British as he sounds they'll have a file. And they're less likely to tell him anything – unless he's a double agent," Gibbs added wryly.

"Boss," McGee offered, "Do you want me to – "

"No, McGee, I do not want. If you get caught hacking British Intelligence it's an international incident, not just a felony."

"Ah," McGee sort of gulped. "Right."

"Go on, get to it." He made shooing gestures with his hands. Gibbs had already yapped more today then he normally did in a week. "But track down the petty officer's friends first."

**x**

Tim and Ziva shifted toward their desks. 

But Tony stayed where he was. Tony figured Gibbs had known about the other thing, with the guards and the fire, so . . . it was definitely possible the boss would know this, too.

And eventually that basement talk had really helped. Not right away. But when he'd had time to work through it . . . Of course that was why he'd gone to Gibbs' basement that night in the first place, beyond making his case for going to Colombia. It wasn't generally a lovey-dovey experience, but when Tony was cracking up the boss usually knew how to give him what he needed. Knew when to listen, and how to say what needed to be said. Even if Tony didn't realize it, right in the moment.

Being able to accept the round-about help that came from a sometimes infuriating distance was one of the requirements of any agent who was going to last on Gibbs' team.

"Hey, Boss," he spoke hesitantly, and the rest of the team paused to listen. "Do you know what the kid meant in that meeting?"

Gibbs looked up irritably from the papers he'd begun going through, impatient not only with the fact that there was a question, but that it made no sense.

" . . . In the debrief," Tony added, "about how he said he came back for us because he had a heart-to-heart. With you."

Tony thought maybe Gibbs and Gray had spoken about something important when the two of them were busting out of Camp Six. He had no idea how that was possible, given Gibbs' dismal Spanish – and the general conversational habits in any language, as far as he could tell, of both Gibbs and Gray. But what other explanation was there?

The boss looked down at the papers in front of him – carbon copies of bail forms, the receipt – and shuffled them into a pile, reaching for a fresh folder to put them in. "Not sure."

Tony waited, studying him. 'Not sure' meant Gibbs had a damn good guess. The question was whether he was going to keep it to himself or let the rest of them in on it.

When Gibbs glanced up at Tony, his senior agent was watching him seriously. Warily. Gibbs faltered in his movements, drawn back to his basement and Dinozzo's total explosion.

_If I'd let you rot – asshole – you weren't there –_

_You weren't there_.

Gibbs was well aware that Tony hadn't gone off grid and down to Colombia for the job. He hadn't done it for a friend, either. He'd gone after family. Gibbs knew – how could he not? – that Dinozzo took him as more than a work mentor. Gibbs was a defacto father-figure because Tony's own father . . . well. He wasn't there. Ziva was the same.

But for people like Tony and Ziva family was different. It wasn't a gift that was just there for the taking. It wasn't automatic, or unconditional. It wasn't free. It was Rule Fourteen all over the place, a compact, a deal - an oath. Something sacred, yes. But still something that could be broken if you walked away from it.

They'd risked everything to pull him out of that hellhole, they'd done things they hated to do. That Gibbs couldn't bear to think of them doing. They did it because they had only one rule for family, really. The one their own families broke by abandoning them.

They'd come for him even after Gibbs had done the same, essentially, when he left them with no explanation. That was his right as a boss. That's what you did, didn't you? Hand over the reins and move on. Tony and Ziva would find the support they needed elsewhere, he had no doubt. Hadn't they done that over and over again anyway, taking mentors for fathers? Tony was raised by coaches. Ziva by her commanding officers.

And Gibbs – well, he tended to shy away from oaths these days. From vows of any kind. But he was reluctant to do it this time. Somewhere along the way he'd committed himself without evening realizing. It happened slowly, over years – and not with words. With more important things. Actions. Hearts. He'd raised them up in a way, led them, protected them, and maybe because they didn't have families waiting for them outside the job, it bled over into more. Until they'd thrown away everything but this, and come for him in Colombia.

Now, somehow, he couldn't walk away. Not again.

Gibbs looked toward the windows, sighing. Thinking back on it. "Just before the patrol grabbed us, Gray looked back at me. You remember that?"

"Yes," Ziva said, stepping back toward his desk. "He always heard them approaching first and would indicate where to go. Which way to retreat."

Gibbs shook his head, going over it once again in his mind. "No," he reminded her. "Not when I was there. That first contact, the two-man patrol, was too close. We barely heard them before they were on top of us. If we'd all tried to back out they'd of heard us."

Ziva nodded.

"That first time, Gray signaled for us to stay where we were. I figured he would try to lead them off himself, so I waved him out. Told him to let us handle it. Kid looked surprised," Gibbs said. And he hadn't realized then just how unusual that was, to be able to read anything at all on that face. "He thought we'd want him to deal with it." Gibbs paused. "With the second patrol he looked back to check in with me, must have realized by then that I would hear it about the same time. Anyway, I told him to beat it."

Tony blinked. "You – did the hand thing," the agent performed a half-hearted signal, "and told him to run?"

"Yeah."

"You knew we were outnumbered," Ziva probed, "before you saw them?"

"I counted more than four for sure, approaching from a superior position, and they knew we were there. We wouldn't have made it if we all ran, and they might have opened fire if we'd tried it. But on his own I thought Gray had a shot."

"Did you think he'd come back for you?" Tim asked, cautious. Testing the waters of a Gibbs answering questions.

"No." The boss sat back in his chair and huffed a laugh. "Eight to one? And we were transported by vehicle. Didn't think he could catch up to us even if he wanted to." Gibbs paused again. "Plus he only tranked my guards at the camp. I assumed he wasn't willing to kill for us."

"So the heart-to-heart – ?" McGee asked.

There was a bit of silence. Gibbs wasn't sure how to answer that. Didn't they see it?

"The CIA Boss," Tony said, "in the debriefing. He was surprised the kid came back for us. Gray must not have a history of going out of his way for other teams stuck in that jungle. But I bet whoever those guys were, they didn't go out of their way for Gray either."

Ziva nodded. "I agree. It was a true heart-to-heart, as you say, one without words. Gibbs tried to protect Gray from the patrols, and that earned his trust, or perhaps his respect. Ironically, he came back for us because you told him to run."

"Or," McGee spoke up with the less appealing possibility, "the 'heart-to-heart' line meant nothing and he just believed that Gibbs was valuable to him and worth the risk."

Gibbs was willing to let that go, but Ziva spoke up. "No, I do not believe so. Gray could have saved our lives from the patrol with very little risk to his own, and still earned our loyalty. But he chose to attack at a much less advantageous moment, simply to protect us from harm."

Gibbs nodded to show his agreement, though he wasn't sure that he or Dinozzo would have gotten the same consideration. It was Ziva the kid had risked his life to shield.

McGee accepted that, and slotted the new puzzle pieces into place. "So your efforts to protect him earned his assistance – his protection in return. You think Kort might have done the same, to earn his trust? Protected Gray?" McGee pondered, his mind leaping ahead. "Or more, for the two of them to accept each other like they do."

Gibbs nodded. "It's possible. Find out. After you find the petty officer."

While his agents busied themselves at their desks he walked upstairs. Gibbs would make inquiries of his own from MTAC.


	4. Hunting

They got the Calera break Gibbs was waiting for a month later. Two off-duty Marines were shot and killed trying to buy a dime of pot. Someone was after the dealer and the Marines were in the way when shooters pulled up and sprayed the alley.

Abby looked at a bunch of blood-covered spores with her microscope, went on and on for ten minutes about the ecological wonders of the rain forest, and finally declared that the pot their dead Marines were buying was Colombian, from the same region as the Calera camps. Gibbs gave her two Caf-Pows and an extra hug. 

Ironically the dealer survived, which was fine, because that gave Gibbs the chance to "interview" him at the hospital, in a morphine-induced haze. The dealer said he was behind in payments to his supplier, and his supplier had a strict collection policy, pay or die. 

The team tracked down the supplier inside of a week. But this guy wasn't a kid on a corner. Gibbs leaned on him for eight days and got nothing. Since the dirtbag would be running his empire from prison anyway, Gibbs swallowed the bile, asked silent forgiveness from the Marines' families, and did what he never did. He worked with the legal department to put together a deal.

After the paperwork was signed, the supplier revealed that _some_ of his product _might_ come from Colombia, but personally, he got it from a couple of the bigger DC connects. He coughed up their street names, "Preacher" and "AK." Now, the dirtbag who killed their Marines _might_ go up for parole before he died of old age. Gibbs personally walked him back to his cell just so he could have the pleasure of throwing him in it, and then he went to Vance.

He knocked and poked his head in. "Have a minute?"

Vance was typing on his laptop. "You knocked. I'm already worried enough to make a minute."

Gibbs stepped in and closed the door behind him, taking the liberty of sitting in one of the conference table chairs. "Director," he said. "I'm concerned about the rise in drug use among our service men and women."

Vance sat back in his chair and frowned at Gibbs. "Let me guess. You'd like to volunteer your time in a counseling program."

Gibbs smiled. "I think my time might be better invested on the supply end of things."

"The drive-by Marines?"

Gibbs nodded. "The supplier went for the deal. Gave up a couple names."

"And?"

"Well," Gibbs shrugged. "Drug use in the ranks is up. I think we've got to hit back, and not just at the small game." Gibbs made a sort of stair-gesture with his hand. "We should go up the chain."

Vance eyed him, and finally said, "You're never more chipper than when you're suicidal, Gibbs."

"Not suicidal. Hunting."

Vance brought the tips of his fingers together in front of his chest. "You want time to go up the chain."

"Some of the major crimes caseload will need to go to other teams or my people will burn out. If that's not possible, I'll take a leave of absence and do this myself."

Vance rubbed his forehead. "You would, too," he muttered. And the rest of Gibbs' team would follow. "Alright. But keep me in the loop. Once you get going the other agencies are sure to come pounding at my door."

Gibbs nodded carelessly, already standing.

"Gibbs, I mean that," Vance said sharply. "This cartel is serious bad news. I don't want to be caught unaware when hell itself is brought down on my agency just because you've got a pole up your ass about this one particular drug lord. No going off the reservation, no lone ranger cowboy crap. People will die. And while that's acceptable if it's _you_ , since you're the one riding the pole, the cartel is unlikely to stop there."

Gibbs shrugged again as he moved toward the door, looking halfway between offended and hurt. And like he really had to run because he was about to go out and buy himself his favorite flavor of ice cream cone. "Alright Leon, I got it. Sheesh."

He practically skipped out.

Vance shook his head and went back to his email, a weird churn of worry and pride in his gut. NCIS usually waited for the crime to come to them – that was the nature of law enforcement. But now his best team was going out there to meet it, switching to the offensive.

Vance smiled down at his paperwork. 

They were going hunting.

**x**

The trouble with prey that's higher up the food chain is that it's better at not getting caught. They identified Preacher and AK and set up surveillance. They pried into their lives as much as possible without giving themselves away. The guys they were trailing were midlevel management, but they still had a lot of money to throw around. If the suppliers had gone so far as to buy a few dirty cops, even a clandestine warrant would ruin the game.

Gibbs' team focused on arresting foot soldiers, catching them in crimes large and small, waiting for one that had the right combination of good intel and weak character to crack it open. 

At first, local metro was pissed. Gibbs' thread from two dead Marines to half a city's worth of street pushers was pretty damn thin. But then the LEOs realized that Gibbs was willing to bargain. NCIS had federal resources that were damn handy, and Gibbs was able to get miraculously fast turn-around on forensics, legal, special equipment – hell, pretty much anything you could ask for - and he wasn't grabby with the credit, either. Gibbs let the local guys have the glory. All he wanted was the information.

Word got around and the boss became bizarrely popular. Word was that Gibbs had a son, or a nephew, or maybe a little brother who got mixed up in drugs, and now he was out for blood. Tony might have had something to do with that rumor. The LEOs ate it up.

The FBI was another story. A guy named Dargas, high up in their drug task force, was assigned to deal with Gibbs. Whenever they went near a scene or a lead the FBI was involved with it was Section Chief Dargas who got in Gibbs' face. He was tall and wide with a big head and thinning, slicked back salt-and-pepper hair. 

Dargas was what Tony called an unholy crusader. There'd been guys like him on the vice squad Tony worked in Baltimore. Nobody particularly liked the pathetic, dangerous perps they chased down day in and day out, but the unholy crusaders loathed them. They hated every suspect and they hated every case. They hated it so much they got off on it. They were the ones that suspects – and plenty of cops – knew instinctively to avoid. 

Dargas had assembled a whole team of crusaders, and it gave Tony the creeps.

It all hit the fan in November, a Friday night. Tony was at a bar with a frat brother, listening to marriage woes and trying not to feel too old, when Gibbs called. Tony held up a finger mid-woe. "Yeah Boss."

"Dinozzo. FBI sting went bad, they've got one agent dead and two missing. Dargas is leading a sweep, pretty much every drug den in a twenty mile radius. Staging area's a lot in Anacostia – Abby's sending you coordinates."

Tony could feel the hang-up coming. He was already on his feet.

"Dargas is inviting us in on it?"

"No, Dinozzo. I'm inviting myself. Meet you there." Gibbs hung up.

Their first weekend off in three and Gibbs was inviting himself on cases. Not even NCIS cases. Another agency's cases.

Then again, two missing agents . . .

"Gotta go, Pat. Listen man, suck it up and buy her flowers, you'll feel better. Give you a call next weekend." If he ever got out of the office. The lot's location was already in his phone.

Tony parked across the street, staring at the scene. There were three white FBI trailers pulled in a loose circle, serving as command posts, generating electricity for massive floodlights. There had to be fifty FBI agents standing around, watching over the circle. It was filled with what looked like two hundred people, hands secured behind their backs with zip ties. Maybe a third of the detained looked really dangerous. But all of them were restless, tipping between bored and mutinous.

The boss was already there, getting yelled at by Dargas. Oddly, Gibbs was just letting the other man yell. Then again, one dead agent and two missing got you a lot of slack.

Dargas spun on his heel and stalked away as Tony walked up. Tony and Gibbs looked at each other and out over the field of people.

"This is . . . "

"Yeah," Gibbs said.

"Insane. Like,  _Cuckoo's Nest_ insane"

"Oh yeah."

Gibbs passed a piece of paper to Tony, a flyer with photos and identifying features of the missing agents. Kyle Hannigan and Angela Monaco. Both early thirties, both ten years in. Kyle looked Irish and Angela looked blonde.

"Dead agent is Manny Garcas, shot in the back of the head. Executed. Found dead at the scene. No other bodies." Gibbs nodded to a house across the street, surrounded by yellow crime scene tape and yet more agents. "Ziva and McGee are out canvassing with the FBI."

"What're we doing?"

"Observing interrogations."

Tony frowned. Random interrogations, from this sweep? They didn't even think the FBI sting was related to Londono's cartel. Gibbs might as well find suspects connected back to the Caleras by throwing darts at the phone book.

"And why are we doing that?"

Gibbs nodded to the seething mess of suspects under the flood lamps. "Got someone we know in there."

"Yeah? Who?" He was hoping to see Preacher or AK, which was unlikely, but a man could dream. Tony was already looking closer, though, and saw him before Gibbs bothered to reply. "Oh shit."

"Yeah."

Gray was in profile, sitting close to another kid who already had a case of the shakes.

The two agents exchanged another look. Dargas' men weren't exactly life-threatening, but they were cruel even on a good day. Dead and missing agents would make it exponentially worse. 

Gibbs didn't know, yet, exactly how Gray connected to Londono or that world. But he was willing to bet that Gray's information would be important in the fight his team was gearing up for. If Gray was exposed by Dargas' wave of arrests, a unique source could well be lost. Hell, if whoever the kid was hiding from found him, he could be dead.

Anyway, as long as the kid wasn't breaking any laws – any really bad ones – Gibbs considered protecting Gray from enraged, shoddy law enforcement as part of the deal, covered in the heart-to-heart. You get my back, I'll get yours. And it was Gibbs' turn. Given how fucked he'd been in that camp, it would stay his turn for a good long time. And it was clear, now, the reason they pulled him out. The reason Gibbs was still alive. It wasn't complicated, though Gray risking so much just to get _him_  obscured it. It was protection. From this, right here. This was Gibbs' jungle, and Gray was . . . whatever he was doing, he needed someone inside to survive it.

"Kort called you?"

Gibbs took a sip off his coffee and smiled. Dinozzo eyed him warily. But Kort hadn't needed to call him – Gibbs was already on guard. The kid chose well. "No. Heard the sweep on the scanner, came to check it out."

He'd called Kort, though, when he recognized the kid, hesitating only a moment before leaving a terse message. There was a limit to the protection Gibbs could provide in a situation like this. An NCIS agent couldn't interfere in a hunt for missing FBI agents, not without raising all kinds of hell, not to mention red flags about his connection to Gray, if Gibbs was obvious about protecting the kid. Kort had more backchannel resources, provided he was in any position to use them. For all Gibbs knew the man was working in a cell-phone-free zone, selling guns in Tibet, or buying them in Timbuktu.

They turned their attention back to the detained, squinting under the bright lights. Tension was already roiling off the crowd, many of whom looked like they would be unstable even on a happy day, in their happy place. Tony and Gibbs watched a fight break out and spread through the group, a knot of frustrated men wrestling and yelling, kicking the hell out of each other. Gray watched and managed to haul his oblivious buddy out of the way, working awkwardly with his hands behind his back.

Gibbs opened his phone and put a call in to Fornell, letting him know in no uncertain terms that a clusterfuck was in the works in this lot. Tobias promised he would do what he could to speed up transfers to cells. Gibbs told him to put in a request for medics while he was at it.

"Hey Boss," Tony turned to Gibbs suddenly. "If he's in the system as your kid, if they have his prints on file . . ." These people knew who Gibbs was. Gray could kiss his protective anominity goodbye, and Gibbs would be in for an interrogation of his own involving the falsification of records.

"Yeah. Abby's working on it."

Tony and Gibbs leaned against a police cruiser's bumper and watched the circus. Eventually the shaking boy Gray was looking after started to puke. Shouts of disgust and some shoving erupted from the men around him.

Gibbs stalked off.

A few minutes later an FBI agent approached and helped Gray haul the shaking kid over to a lone group of junkies who were all just as sick, or close to it. The agent switched the sick kid's cuffed hands to the front and set some plastic bags and water bottles down next to him.

Tony circled around, keeping his distance, and noticed that Gray was bleeding from a cut on his head. A lot of the suspects were roughed up. Addicts were unpredictable, it was safest to take them down hard. Tony'd done his share of that, though he didn't think he'd ever done quite that much damage to a kid.

Twenty minutes later Gibbs returned, a pair of medics in tow to treat the worst off in the group. Not long after that buses began hauling suspects back to the FBI pens. They pushed Gray up the steps and chained him to a seat, skipping the addict he was with. Interviewing anyone in that state would be a waste of time. Whoever the sick one was, he stayed behind with the rest of the addicts, watched over by the medics until he could be transferred to a clinic.

Gibbs put a call in to McGee, telling him to get his butt to the lot, pronto. They knew Gray took care of his own, not strangers. That addict was one of his.

**x**

Gibbs and Dinozzo drove back to the Hoover building and watched a series of useless interviews that went nowhere. Everyone there was charged with possession and evading arrest, and every single one of them was tested for gunshot residue. It would take forever to process the results for almost three hundred people and after a conversation with Abby, Gibbs was convinced that the tests would be useless anyway.

The real search for the missing agents was going on elsewhere. In the investigation at the crime scene, in the forensics surrounding the dead agent's murder, in the search on the streets. But Dargas's crew was big enough to carry out a targeted investigation and at the same time use the momentum they'd have behind them at the Bureau to make a career-enhancing splash with this shotgun sweep. The best agents were out in the field. The B-team running the interrogations operated in a red haze of rage and entitlement, fueled by the extraordinary circumstances and total lack of oversight. There weren't enough public defenders immediately available and the mass of strung-out men and women weren't smart enough, or didn't care enough, to wait for public aid attorneys to be assigned to them. They fought with each other, they fought with the agents, and they mostly got the shit beat out of them.

It was volatile, it was unnecessary, and it was sloppy. Gibbs was not happy.

He checked in with Ziva and McGee at dawn. Gray's addict friend was admitted to Bethesda, at least temporarily, under McGee's watch and the weight of Leon Vance's name. Gibbs reminded himself to call Vance. Ziva and the FBI agents she rode with, the best from Fornell's section, had nothing after a night of kicking in doors, searching gang members' lairs. Gibbs sent Tim and Ziva home to sleep.

He and Tony were heading from Dargas' bullpen to the holding pens, stuffing down the last of the cheese danishes they'd lifted from a breakfast tray, when Gibbs' phone rang. There was no preamble. "You can't get him out from the inside?"

Gibbs chewed and swallowed. Of course he _could_. But. "Not without force. Course then we'd both be felons."

"Won't they release him quickly anyway? They can't have anything on him."

"No idea. This wasn't a normal bust."

"You'll be recognized if you claim him?"

"Yeah. This squad knows me. Listen," Gibbs frowned, glancing around. He stepped into a quieter, empty alcove, Tony following. "The situation here isn't friendly, Kort. These guys are on the warpath. I think you want to get the kid out as soon as possible."

Kort didn't ask questions. He just trusted it. "Alright. I'll arrange it. But it will take some time."

"How long?"

"Afternoon, at the earliest. End of the day latest."

Half a day was Kort's idea of "some time"? Gibbs relaxed. That wasn't so bad. "Okay."

"You'll stay with him."

"Yeah."

**x**

Gray was stuffed into one of several pens already overflowing with suspects. Gibbs didn't want to call attention to him by asking about his status specifically. He looked the pens over and left Tony to keep an eye on things while he grabbed a nap on the floor of Fornell's office, Tobias being out in the field. They'd monitor the situation until Kort could get his spook machinery moving.

Tony woke Gibbs up at noon with a cup of coffee, waiting for him to sit up and rub the sleep from his eyes to give him an update. The room was dim, pulled blinds shutting out an overcast day. "No word on Hannigan or Monaco, Boss. Feebs have been interrogating and releasing the dead-end suspects from the pens ever since morning processing came in. They're down to under forty now, and it looks like they're sticking to it."

"Gray?"

"He's one of the forty."

What could the kid possibly . . . ? "Any idea why?"

"Nope. They've got reasons for the ones they've kept, it wasn't random," Tony said tiredly. "But they're not sharing them with me."

Gibbs nodded and stood up, stretching the kinks out of his back. He called McGee and found that his youngest agent had gone into the Navy Yard after a few hours sleep to lend a hand combing though the city's electronic surveillance, looking for any sign of the missing agents. When Gibbs asked about Ziva, McGee said he hadn't seen her.

Technically, since it was a Saturday and they weren't working a case, she was on her own time. But that didn't sit right. McGee was a boy scout, so he was spending his free Saturday doing what he could for his fellow Feds. Ziva was no boy scout. But she was like Gibbs – she kept a tally of people she owed, and she paid her debts. Right now she owed Gray. And there was some kind of connection between Ziva and Gray, or at least there had been, out in the jungle. Gibbs thought she'd be in full bore mother lion mode, doing anything she could in the team's collective effort to get Gray out of this mess.

His gut was itchy.

Gibbs hung up on McGee and punched up her speed dial. She answered on the first ring.

"Gibbs."

"Ziva. Where are you?"

"I am here."

"Here?"

"The FBI pens. That is where you are, is it not?"

Gibbs frowned. "What're you doing?"

A pause. "I am waiting to observe Gray's interrogation."

Gibbs cast a look at Tony. He was already lying relaxed on the floor, jacket bunched up under his head, eyes closed. Gibbs could tell he was listening.

"Where exactly?"

"Sublevel Two. The hallway to the right as you exit the North Wing elevators."

Gibbs took a moment to fix that position mentally. The FBI building was massive.

He hung up and looked at his phone, and then at Tony, whose eyes were still closed.

"Think she's got a thing for him, Boss."

Gibbs shook his head and walked out. "I'll call you in a few hours."

He was pretty sure Tony was asleep before the door closed behind him.


	5. Tracks

He found Ziva sitting in a scruffy basement hallway, her back against a wall. The wall was painted a screaming, godawful blue.

He stopped and looked her over as she rose to her feet.

"The pens are down there," she nodded to her left. "And the interrogation rooms are that way," she gestured to the right. "They have spent about an hour with each of the suspects so far. Gray has not been interviewed."

An hour?

"How long have you been here?"

"I arrived at 0630."

Six hours ago. Half an hour after he'd called McGee and Ziva and told them to go home.

"Thought I told you to get some sleep."

"I am not sleepy."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. Ziva had an independent streak, but outright defiance was rare. "Has Dargas been by?"

She gave him her usual, thorough rundown. "He was here briefly around 0800, then left. His agents are running the interrogations. I think they are inexperienced. The better agents are in the field. I looked over the pen briefly. Gray's head has been bandaged. I spoke to an agent and he showed me the names of the suspects in the pen. There is no Gray or Alan Gibbs on the list, nor any permutation of either name. Unless he is using a name we do not know I believe he has been given a number."

So Gray hadn't been carrying ID and he hadn't talked, even to give his name.

"Any lawyers come by?"

"I do not believe so. Though I do not know if that is because none were requested or if those that were requested have yet to be assigned."

Gibbs rubbed his forehead. Normally he wasn't a fan. But a lawyer might have at least gotten Gray out of general holding, and maybe another visit by a medic. He didn't like the idea of the kid in the same pens with grown men. And a head injury wasn't something to screw around with either.

"The agent you talk to say why they're keeping the ones they are?"

"Most of them were retained because of violent offenses in their records or because they are suspected of having a connection to the gang targeted by the sting." She studied his face and continued hopefully. "Perhaps they have not released Gray because he has not been identified. If they have not been able to bring up his record and confirm that it is clean - "

Gibbs shook his head. "They've run his prints by now. They already know he doesn't have a record."

Nothing that was still in the system, anyway.

They stood there for a minute in silence. Gibbs took up a post next to her, leaning back, sipping his fresh coffee, staring at the blue on the opposite wall until his eyes hurt. Waiting for Gray to walk by wasn't exactly a two-person job and Gibbs already had Dinozzo in the wings. But Ziva didn't seem to be going anywhere.

"Something on your mind, Ziva?"

She shifted uncomfortably but didn't answer. Unusual, these days. The minutes crawled by, the buzz of the bare yellow bulbs overhead the only sound. Something was on her mind, then, but she wouldn't - or couldn't - say what it was.

Gibbs' fingers tightened around the cup in his hand.

Gaining her trust had been like peeling an onion, progress measured in years, in thin, barely perceptible layers. After the Reynosas and Colombia some of those layers had inevitably reappeared. He knew it wasn't the murder that really bothered her. She understood the madness of revenge, the desire for swift justice, even if she resisted them herself. It was the fact that he had almost been caught. That he'd almost been sent away. And the reason, that was important too - he simply hadn't cared enough to stay. It made him unreliable. 

Like Abby said, and Dinozzo had screamed. He hadn't fought for them. He wasn't there. The miracle was that she'd ever achieved any trust in him at all. Betrayed by her father and brother, manipulated by her mentors - Ziva should be like Kort now, or Gray - trust so locked away it was nonexistent, like a muscle that had atrophied.

But she wasn't like Kort. She'd come back from it, back from her family and Mossad, Rivkin and Somalia. She'd come back to _him_ , and his team. Sometimes it still surprised him. Even now, in her silence, she had found her way to trusting him. It was tentative, like it had been years ago. But Ziva wasn't hiding her unease. She just couldn't bring herself to explain it.

It was enough, for now.

Gibbs pushed himself off the wall and walked down to the pens. There were two large holding cells in use on this floor, just under twenty men in each. A lone agent sat in a cushy wheely chair nearby, a pile of files by his feet and one open in his lap.

Gray was in the second pen. The good spots – the bunks, the walls – were taken by the larger men, relative comfort corresponding to the rate of muscle growth. The only detainee Gibbs cared about was on the floor, back up against the bars, head resting on the metal behind him.

He wasn't curled in on himself, exactly. It was a defensive pose, but loose enough to look confident. A fine line. Too much confidence would attract attention. Too little - well, in a place like this, acting like prey could make you prey.

Gray looked like he might be sleeping, but it was hard to tell without seeing his face. Bright blood stained the butterfly bandage wrapped around his temple. Dark blood matted his hair and covered the right shoulder of his t-shirt.

Gibbs scanned the rest of the pen. Gray wasn't the only one sporting an injury, but he was the youngest in there by a long shot.

"Hey pappi, you come to take me home?" One of the men in the bunks, biceps bigger than his head, smiled at Gibbs like a cat.

Many of the men turned to look at him then, but Gray didn't move. Gibbs responded in case the kid was awake. "Depends." He took a step closer to the bars. "Where are Hannigan and Monaco?"

"Oh, the little agents you lost. Saw the pictures." Big Arms laughed. "You think I knew where a sweet bitch like that was I'd tell you?" He leered and smacked his lips. "No I would keep that piece to myself." He bucked his hips and grabbed his crotch to the catcalls of the men in the pen.

"Guess you're not going home then," Gibbs said, and walked away.

He passed Ziva on the way to the elevators and met her eyes briefly. "Let me know if they move him."

He went to find Dargas.

Dargas was out of the building, busting down doors somewhere, but Gibbs did find what he was pretty sure was the man's third-in-command. "What's the plan with the suspects in the pens downstairs?"

The agent looked up at him, tense and sleepless, rage lurking in the corners of his eyes. One agent dead and two vanished into thin air, the Golden Hours long gone. "Agents are interviewing them," he said shortly.

"Any of them turn up with residue?"

"No."

Gibbs flexed his jaw, feeling stuck. He could point out that one of the people they were holding was obviously a juvenile, and also had a head injury, but he didn't think a plea for sympathy was going to get him very far. For all he knew this guy was Mother Theresa yesterday, but now he was out for blood.

"I could do some of the interviews, move the process along."

"We have no shortage of manpower, Gibbs. Get out of my way." Gibbs stepped aside and the agent walked off, maps of city blocks in his hands.

Every resource of the entire FBI was available to this squad right now, which meant no shortage of agents. Even if that wasn't true Gibbs was sure there was no better way to get on Dargas' shit list than to be accommodating to Gibbs. He asked anyway for one simple reason. He hated waiting.

He hit the head, got another coffee, and went back downstairs. He found Ziva motionless but alert, in the exact same position she'd been in when he left. He shook his head. "I'm going in to observe the other interrogations. Call me when they move him."

He was watching a pair of FBI agents scream at a dealer, and the dealer scream back, when she called.

"Room six," was all she said.

He joined her in the viewing alcove less than a minute later. Gray was alone in the interrogation room, sitting motionless in a chair facing them. His hands were secured behind his back again and the stain on the bandage at his hairline had grown. Gibbs winced as he looked him over. He could see now that the entire right side of his face had been scraped raw. Probably went down hard on a sidewalk and been dragged.

Ziva held a hand up to the glass. "They are keeping the rooms cold."

Gibbs glanced at her. No matter how rough Dargas' men got it wasn't likely to get physically dangerous. "He'll be fine."

She leaned toward the glass, her focus intense on Gray's expressionless face. "Everyone has a breaking point," she said, voice low.

Her tone was laced with something  . . . some  _understanding_ that he didn't have.

Gibbs' eyes narrowed. Personal trust was one thing. That was negotiable. Earned. Relevant facts about the job, or at least the kid sitting on the other side of the glass, were entirely different. When he spoke again his voice was sharp. "You know something I don't, Ziva?"

She hesitated. "I do not like this, Gibbs." Her voice was firm and cold. She really didn't like it. And she hadn't answered the question.

She did know something. Something that was freaking her out.

He looked at her closely, jerked out his phone, and called Fornell.

"What."

"Wanted to warn you, you got a lawsuit brewing down here." Gibbs could hear office sounds in the background. He wondered where Dinozzo was sleeping if Tobias was already back.

"I couldn't care less."

"Tell me what this kid is down here for or you're going to have a problem." Gibbs' tone made it clear that he would make sure there was a problem.

"They've already weeded out the misfits. The only suspects still in the pens are legitimate possibilities."

"Possibilities for _what_?"

"For information, Gibbs."

"A juvenile with no record and a head wound? I want to know what he's in here for."

A pause on the line, then the other man came through loud and clear. But mostly loud. "You don't get to order me around, you arrogant son of a bitch! Why are you even here?"

Gibbs pulled the phone away from his ear a bit. Fornell had a temper, but it was usually slow to emerge. Today he was on a short fuse. "Just tell me what you know about this kid, Tobias. Will you please do that?"

The _please_ got a few seconds shocked silence. "Hold on," Fornell said grudgingly.

There were computer clicking sounds, and then a conversation in the background, and then silence, more conversation . . . Gibbs ground his teeth.

"You still there?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, what's the name."

"No name."

"Oh," Fornell growled. "And that's not suspicious."

A pause.

"The only no-name still in holding is number 87. No ID, hasn't identified himself or asked for a lawyer or a guardian. Known to carry a weapon. Prolonged drug use," Fornell concluded. "Weapons and drugs, Gibbs. That's what this is all about, in case you haven't heard."

"Known to carry? By who?"

"Says here other witnesses said he's known to have a gun."

"Agents didn't find anything on him?"

"No."

"And the drugs? Also your upstanding witnesses?"

There was a pause and more clicking.

"Tracks," Fornell said smugly. "Don't call me again unless you have information on our missing agents." The line went dead.

Gibbs shut his phone and walked out of observation, reappearing in the interview room a second later. The cuffs were pulled behind Gray's back, arms pressed between the back of the chair and his body.

"Stand up."

Gibbs had to twist the thin wrists and shove up loose sleeves to see his inner arms. The only scars he could see were old, but they were there. The tracks of a heroin addict. He stared at them hard. Any agent would know that if there were old ones on his arms there could be fresh hidden almost anywhere.

"When was the last time you shot up?"

Gray ignored him.

Gibbs walked out and slammed back into the viewing room, coming to a stop next to Ziva. "He's here for the long haul."

"He is not a drug user," she hissed.

Gibbs ran a hand through his hair, frustrated, boxed in. How the kid got those marks didn't matter. Not today. Not here. "Well, he's obviously got a history of it, Ziva. The only way to know whether he's using now is to test him and the FBI isn't going to bother. He'd be here for awhile even if he did lawyer up."

Ziva shook her head. "These agents – I observed them earlier, Gibbs. They will push until they get a response."

Gibbs didn't have a chance to follow up on that. Two young men, part of Dargas' team, entered the room. One sat in the chair across from Gray, one propped himself against the wall behind him.

"Number 87," the one at the table said. "How you doing? Have a good night?"

Gray stared neutrally at the man across from him, eyes so pale and dull in the dingy room they matched the walls.

"Gibbs," Ziva said quickly. "The camera."

He folded his arms across his chest and kept his eyes on the interrogation. "They don't need a record for court, Ziva. All they want is information that will lead to their agents."

His voice was calm, but he felt the unease start to rise. She was right. A camera would be a protection for the kid at this point. Gray wasn't in the system; he was young but unclaimed. Weak, in other words. Vulnerable. Prey. And if Gray stubbornly stayed quiet the FBI agents would read his silence as defiance. An alluring mix for a pair of bullies riding high.

"Still quiet today, eh eighty-seven? You know, my friend and I were talking and we think you deserve a name. Nobody's a number, right?"

"That's right," the agent behind Gray spoke for the first time.

"So we had a vote and we decided to call you mouse. In Espanol that's ratón, did you know that?"

The agent paused as if he expected Gray to answer, and then leaned forward. "I can't hear you ratón, did you say something?"

"I don't think he said anything." The second agent.

"Well rat, believe me, I know the value of silence. On an ordinary day I would give a shit what you have to say," the first agent said cheerfully. "But this isn't an ordinary day, is it? And you know why, don't you?"

Another pause.

"I told you before. But I'm going to tell you again, just in case you're as slow as you look. How's that sound?"

Silence.

The agent flipped lazily through the slim file in front of him. "You know, if you're missing a tongue or something like that, rat, it would only be polite to nod yes or no. Do you know how to nod yes or no?"

The agent behind Gray stepped forward and seized a fistful of hair, pulling him upright in his seat.

"That's okay." The first agent was friendly, all sunshine. "My friend is going to teach you. Yes," Gray's head was dragged forward. "And no." He jerked from side to side and was released, body dropping an inch back into the seat.

The agent sitting at the table laughed. "Pretty good. Now you try."

Gray was still for just a moment before the agent behind him hit the back of his head, knocking him forward, into a nod.

"It's okay if you're not a fast learner," Sitting Agent said quietly, closing the file. "We're going to help you out."

The guy was good, or would have been without the over-reliance on intimidation. The problem with that approach was that it didn't work on everyone. Seldom on the well-trained officers Gibbs so often faced across the table. And he would eat that file folder before it worked on Gray.

"We've got lots of time to teach you. Do you know why that is?"

Gray's head went back and forth, the tendons in his neck standing out. The skin along his head had been wrenched and a thin line of blood trickled out from under the bandage, smearing along his temple.

"Gibbs," Ziva whispered. He was completely still beside her.

Gibbs didn't bother to look at her. The situation wasn't ideal, but Gray could handle it. "We'll just get thrown out of the building if we go in there now, Ziva."

"It will be worth it," she growled.

"No, it won't."

Something extreme would have to happen to get the FBI's own kicked off an interrogation in this building. Something more extreme than what they were seeing here. And on Dargas' crew, who knew if someone better would come along to take their place? Meanwhile he and Ziva would be banned, not even able to observe.

"I'm going to tell you why we're willing to spend our valuable time teaching you manners, rat. It's because some of our agents are missing. Our friends. Do you know what that means?"

A shove to the back sent Gray's head forward into his chest. "Oh, of course you do. Because you have friends too, don't you, rat?" Another slap to the back of the head, slamming his body into the table. "I know you do because I've spent some time talking to them. And do you know what they say?"

The standing agent jerked Gray's head back and forth. The kid kept his body relaxed. It went against instinct, but if you could do it when you were being manhandled it would keep the strain on the muscles to a minimum. A learned response.

"Well, I'll tell you what they say. They say you're a dangerous little guy, rat. They say you know your way around. They say you know people, you know things. You know dope. Well, it's obvious you know dope, isn't it? You're all marked up, little rat."

His head slapped forward and a few drops of blood hit the table. "Hey now," the agent tsked. "Don't get your dirty dope blood on my files, rat. You should be more careful."

The head slapped forward again.

"I like this new effort at communication. That's real good, rat, I appreciate it." The sitting agent leaned an elbow on the table and put his chin in his hand. "The trouble is, what we need to know isn't really yes or no kind of information. But there are lots of ways to make a rat squeal. Did you know that?"

The agent behind him jerked Gray's head no.

The sitting one reached inside his jacket and set something on the table in front of him. "Do you know what this is, rat?"

Gray's head jerked no. "That's okay. Didn't think you would, since you haven't been in lockup before. It's a Taser."

The agent looked at Gray's neutral face for a long moment. "Now I want you to think real hard, before we get started, and see if any information comes to mind. Anything you'd like to share. Where you were when Agent Garcas was killed would be a real good place to start."

Silence.

Sitting Agent shrugged. "No? Okay. Well, first things first. We need to make sure you haven't been doing any of that H you like so much overnight. That could lead to complications, rat. First is the search. Arms up."

The agent standing behind Gray reached down and jerked his t-shirt up. It caught under his shoulders, since Gray couldn't possibly lift his arms while they were tied behind his back. The fabric wrenched against his arms and stretched along the neckline until it was finally pulled over his head, the tight fit dragging along his face and opening the new scabs there, smearing the skin with blood.

His body – there were a lot of scars.

Sitting Agent whistled. "Well you're scrawny, rat, but you've definitely been around the block, haven't you? I don't see any new holes, though." His voice was mock thoughtful. "How about you, Fred?"

The standing agent – Fred – hauled Gray to his feet by the shirt tangled around his elbows. "Can't say I do."

"Better keep looking. You know, I hope that shirt still fits when we're done, rat. You should be more careful with your clothes. We send you back half-naked and you might end up a little _too_ popular, you know what I mean?" The agents laughed. "Some of those guys in lockup get kind of desperate. Me, I don't go in for rats. But I do appreciate a woman who doesn't talk and talk. How about you, Fred?"

"I know exactly what you mean."

"The guys in the pen might appreciate you on a whole different level, rat. Or, wait –" Sitting Agent sat back, mock-surprised. "Was that the plan all along? You like it when they appreciate you? That how you pay for your dope?"

Blood oozed from the cuts on his head and his arms twisted awkwardly behind him. But Gray's face was relaxed, pure calm disdain, until that point.

His eyes left the face of the agent and fixed on the mirror, just to the right of where Ziva stood. The look in them turned Gibbs cold. The emptiness had broken. Now there was tension there, the beginning of anger. And if you looked for it, if  you knew . . there was fear.

.


	6. Unholy Crusaders

"If that's how you pay for dope we might just help you out, rat. Open you up! Sure there isn't anything you want to tell us first? Might take you awhile, you know, afterward. To be able to say anything."

"Gibbs," Ziva hissed.

Gibbs rubbed a hand over his mouth. His agents didn't handle intake at NCIS.

"They could be bluffing," he said. Except he didn't really get a bluffing vibe from the men on the other side of the glass. "But cavity searches are common when suspects are receiving visitors, moving in and out of general population. A Taser can be used if he resists."

She reached to the small of her back to pull her weapon, movement sharp with resolve. "Not on him," she said flatly. "I am ending this."

She'd gotten half a step toward the door before he grabbed her arm. "You'll both get worse than a search if you kidnap a suspect, Ziva."

But Gibbs couldn't just watch it happen, either. It wasn't a real search – the agents were pushing, trying to get a kid to break his silence. There was no telling how far they would go, but Gibbs suspected it would have to be damn far before this particular kid would stoop to telling them anything.

He flipped open his phone with his free hand and called Kort.

"Nothing to say?" The sitting agent reached into a pocket and pulled on gloves, snapping latex dramatically around his wrists. "Alright, if that's what you want, rat. Put him over the table, Fred."

Gray went down hard on the table.

Kort picked up on the first ring. "Where the hell are you?" Gibbs growled.

"An agent is on her way. And you?" Kort was in a car, voice almost swallowed by honking horns and squealing tires.

"Sublevel Two, Room Six. Watching the beginning of a cavity search, Kort. Not a very nice one."

Standing Agent pressed the side of Gray's face into the table, fingers digging into his cheek. "Open wide, rat. Told you this would be good practice, didn't I?" The second agent gripped the top of Gray's head by the hair and pulled. His neck stretched out in a bow, jaw opened wide under the force of two men prying it apart. Two gloved fingers slipped into his mouth, moving back and forth over gums and teeth. "Now, this is the part where you swallow." Gray's body heaved as he gagged. 

Ziva's arm jerked, dragging them both toward the door. She was moments away from attacking him, Gibbs could tell.

"Fuck!" Kort hissed. "That cannot happen, Gibbs. Get in there and protect him like he said you would!"

Gibbs shut the phone and spun Ziva to face him. "Put your weapon away or you're not coming in with me."

She looked at him, eyes wild, and shoved her gun back into the clip at her back. He got in her face and spoke fast. "I don't have enough pull to protect you if you pull a gun on another agent, Ziva, you got that? You're no good to me if you're suspended."

Or locked up, stripped of citizenship and deported. He'd tell her to wait in the hall if he thought there was a chance in hell she actually would. "If anyone needs to draw a weapon it's going to be me. We clear?"

She nodded frantically, not even looking at him. The first agent held Gray's shoulders to the table. The second was pulling down his pants.

Gibbs was turning to move out of the room when everything went to hell. Gray began to struggle, kicking, bucking up off the table. It was what the agents were waiting for. One of them dove for the Taser and Gibbs slammed out of the observation room at a run. Fred looked up when the interrogation room door was thrown open, locking eyes with Gibbs, shoving the device into the small of Gray's back. Pulling the trigger.

Gibbs put his Sig to the man's temple. "Back away."

The agent jerked away from the steel pressed into his skin, Taser in his hand falling to the floor. "Gibbs! What the fuck!"

Gray's shoulders twisted out of the other agent's hold, his body sliding from the table onto the floor. He scooted out from under the mens' feet, back against the far wall.

Gibbs gestured with his gun toward the opposite wall and pulled his phone yet again from his pocket. "Get up against the wall."

The agent on the other side of the table leaned forward belligerently. "What do – "

"I will put a bullet in you. Do you understand me?" Gibbs was calm, but his tone had the ring of truth to it. His reputation as a loose cannon probably helped him there. The two agents backed against the wall.

Gibbs tossed his phone to Ziva. "Call Fornell."

The men in front of him relaxed at the familiar name of the section chief, confident he would be on their side. Or at the very least, that Gibbs wouldn't call the man down here just to watch their executions. Ziva handed the cell back to him a moment later and he pressed it against his ear. Fornell answered as the fourth ring died away.

"Gibbs. Let me guess. You've found my missing agents."

"No. But you're going to have two more wounded if you don't get down here."

A slamming noise in the background. The man was already moving. "Suspect got a weapon? Where?"

"Sub two, room six. Only weapon in play is mine." Gibbs paused. "But that doesn't mean anything good for your agents, Tobias."

Fornell slowed to a jog. It was Gibbs who was off the handle, not a lunatic suspect.

On the other hand, he'd known Gibbs for a lot of years, and in all that time he'd learned one thing for sure. The man wasn't prone to exaggeration. "Ten minutes," he snapped.

"Fornell's on his way down," Gibbs said. He holstered his Sig and gestured toward the door. "Wait in the hall."

The agents' mouths opened, faces already flushed angry red.

"Go!" Gibbs roared.

They went.

Bullies. He'd been tangling with them since the third grade, but they rarely gave him a good fight anymore.

Gibbs turned around to find Gray standing again, leaning against the wall. Gibbs stepped forward, concerned about the scraped up mess on the side of Gray's.

"Hey, you –" As Gibbs' hand went up Gray's shoulder ducked low. He shot forward, driving into Gibbs' abdomen, sending him back. It wouldn't have been more than a hard bump if the kid hadn't also swept a heel into the back of Gibbs' bad knee.

Gibbs smothered the instinct to launch forward, to subdue, He managed to keep his feet under him, staggering back into the table. Gray retreated into the far corner and stood there, twitching and spooked, watching them warily. From the disoriented look on his face Gibbs wasn't entirely sure that the kid even recognized them. And so far, in this room, Gibbs had been all menace.

"Okay." Voice like he'd use on a spooked horse. He backed off, palms open to show no threat. "Ziva?"

She slipped out of the loose jacket she was wearing and stepped forward, putting her body between Gray and Gibbs, holding the coat in front of her. "You are cuffed. I would like to release your arms," she said, matter of fact.

Gray focused on her and she waited. Finally he nodded and she stepped forward, draping the jacket across his front, reaching down with one hand to the knife at her calf. "Lean forward a little, so that I can reach the ties," she murmured.

Gibbs watched in case the kid freaked again. But Gray stayed calm. Ziva sawed through the cords around his wrists and slipped the tangled t-shirt down his arms. She handed it to him and he tugged it back over his head. He pulled up his pants, trembling as he worked the zipper.

He looked more himself with his arms were free and dressed, strain relaxing out of his face.

"Alright? Are you injured?" Ziva whispered. He shook his head, face pale.

She looked him over, then turned back to Gibbs.

"We'll wait here for Kort," he decided.

Ziva turned again to the boy. "Sit with me," she said, and sank to the floor, crossing her legs Indian style in front of her, leaning against the wall. Gray slid abruptly down next to her, drawing his knees to his chest.

She put out a hand to him, but the kid didn't seem to notice. Finally she reached over and simply took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. Gibbs held his breath, but Gray barely even glanced at their joined hands. His eyes were fixed over Gibbs' shoulders, on the open door.

Gibbs moved to stand in it.

The two ejected FBI agents huddled at the end of the hall, turning to glare at him when he appeared in the door. One of them was already muttering into his phone.

Gibbs looked back at them nonchalantly, pulling his own phone from his pocket. He called Vance first, thankful when it went to voicemail and he could just leave a message. A head's up.

Then he called Dinozzo. It didn't come as any surprise that his senior agent was no longer napping. Dinozzo did keep himself busy.

**x**

A woman in a dark, crisp suit reached them before Fornell. She blew past the FBI agents and stopped in the doorway, giving Gibbs a once over.

"Agent Gibbs." He raised an eyebrow. He'd never seen this woman before in his life. She was striking - black hair, pale skin, cool blue eyes. She looked past him into the room, but couldn't have seen anything over his shoulders. "You have one of my charges in your custody."

He folded his arms over his chest. "That so? Who would that be?"

"Alan Grayson." She smiled sweetly, at odds with those icy eyes. "My colleague assured me he would be with you."

"Your colleague. And who are you?"

She reached into an inner pocket of the suit and pulled out a badge. "Agent Trent, ICE."

"Agent Trent." He eyed the badge. Courtney Trent, of ICE. It was a real badge alright, and that was her picture. Cute. Gibbs spoke over his shoulder. "Someone here to see you, says her name is Courtney Trent." Gibbs frowned a little at whoever this woman was. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Gray said hoarsely.

Kort's lady lackey glared at Gibbs and edged past him, into the room.

"Good to go, Grayson?"

"Yeah."

The kid's favorite word, only slightly more emphatic this time.

"Alright, let's go. Stay behind me, Gray. Agent Gibbs, if you could bring up the rear."

She was nice enough, but it was professional, no indication she'd ever met the kid before. Not one of Gray's personal contacts, then. Not like Kort.

Gibbs stepped back from the doorway so that she could sweep out, Gray moving so close behind her he looked like a shadow. Gibbs and Ziva followed.

Fred and the other one stepped into their path. A few minutes without Gibbs' gun on them and they'd recollected their backbones.

The talkative one got into Lady Trent's face. "Who the hell are you?"

"Agent Trent, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This boy is in my charge." She pulled a piece of paper from her suit. "Custody orders. ICE's jurisdiction precedes yours in this case. Unless you have credible reason to believe he has committed a crime in your jurisdiction?"

The agent frowned, unsure of himself in the face of official looking paperwork. Gibbs rolled his eyes. Amateur hour.

And then Fornell appeared, face like a storm. "What's going on?" 

Ziva opened her mouth, ready to let loose. Gibbs shot out a hand and jerked her close. "No," he whispered.

Kort's lackey held up the sheaf of papers. "This boy is in ICE's custody. You can apply for his return to FBI holding." Gibbs heard the sweet smile. "If you can come up with a reason to hold him at all."

Fornell stepped forward and took the paperwork, looking it over. "Alan Grayson." He glanced from the woman to his agents. "This kid have anything relevant?"

The one who wasn't Fred muttered. "Don't know. Wouldn't talk."

"Was he at the scene?" Fornell pressed. "With the gang?"

Fred shrugged.

Fornell, unimpressed, shook his head and stood aside, addressing Lady Trent again. "Fine."

The woman and Gray stepped swiftly by the men in the narrow hallway. Gibbs and Ziva moved to follow.

"Gibbs!"

He turned back to see Fornell standing next to the two seething agents, arms held out in a _What the hell?_

Gibbs glanced pointedly at the junior agents. "I'll call you. Good luck with your people."

They practically jogged to the exit.

Kort was waiting in the front parking lot, leaning on an idling black Suburban. Gray crawled into the back. The ICE agent – or whoever she was – disappeared into the front passenger seat.

Gibbs stopped in front of Kort. "Someone should look at his head. And his lower back."

Kort nodded, already moving away.

Gibbs licked his lips, feeling unsure. Not liking it.

_They say you know people, you know things . . ._

Gibbs was a cop, before all, and that loyalty held true. He had to try. "I'd like to ask him something."

Kort looked him over, then turned, reluctant, and rapped on the front passenger window. It slid down and he ducked his head to it, words too quiet to make out.

The back door popped open. Gibbs took a breath and settled the kid with an open, steady gaze. The one for friendly witnesses. "You know anything about the missing agents? Anything that could help?"

Gray stared at him. For a second Gibbs thought he would get the silent treatment, same as Dargas' crew.

"You think I give a fuck about those people?"

Gibbs actually winced. "Most of them aren't like those two," he waved back toward the building. "You know that."

Gray was silent, cold again. The shaking boy who let Ziva hold his hand was long gone.

"No," Gibbs added. Admitted. "I don't think you care. But if you have information, I'm asking you to tell me. They have families."

Gray grabbed the handle of the door and leaned back, swinging it shut.

"Hey," Gibbs stuck out a hand, wedging it open. "Your friend. The sick one back at the lot."

Gray stilled.

"He's at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, admitted as Alan McGee. He won't be able to stay long before the paperwork catches up to him." Gibbs released the door and stepped back. "You want help getting him into a program," he said gruffly, "give a call."

"Hey Boss!" Tony's voice sailed over them. He'd materialized behind Gibbs.

The portion of Kort's face not covered by sunglasses grimaced, and he looked away.

"Actually that's old intel. Alan McGee's been transferred to Phoenix House, over in Arlington." Dinozzo peered over Gibbs' shoulder. "It's a voluntary facility, he can leave when he wants. Or he can stay, till he's feeling better. Ninety days is sort of the minimum package." Tony's eyes slid over Gray's face, the grubby bandage. "Hey Smokey. Close shave?"

Gray kept his grip tight on the door. But he didn't move to pull it closed. Not right away. "If I did care, I'd look in the river," he said finally. "Same place that crew usually dumps."

Gibbs frowned. If the gang had "usual" dumping grounds the FBI would've searched them by now -

"Course they haven't gone after anyone you'd give a shit about, so those bodies aren't on your books. Seventh District cops fished three junkies last spring. They'll know where to look."

"You think they're dead?" Gibbs pressed.

Gray's gaze left his, squinting instead out the car's front window. "I don't know the first goddamn thing about them," he said. "But that gang hasn't left anyone who crossed them alive before. Don't know why they'd start now."

He tugged firmly on the handle and the door swung shut. Kort climbed in the back on the other side. The car pulled away instantly.

Gibbs glanced at Dinozzo. "That was fast."

Tony shrugged. "I got to know some of the ladies at Phoenix when I worked Vice. It's a good program, far as they go. If he sticks with it."

It was an excellent program, one of the best on the East Coast. The waiting period for that place was months, minimum, and patching together the financing for a rootless kid to be accepted there in just a few hours would take some serious red tape finesse. More finesse than Gibbs had, anyway.

"Good job, Dinozzo," he said. But this wasn't just the job, so . . . "Thanks."

Tony grinned.

Gibbs called Fornell. The FBI called the Seventh District and put divers in the water. They found both agents a few hours later, bodies pulled from the bottom of the river.

**x**

Gibbs figured he would be persona non grata at the FBI building for . . . well, two or three years, probably. Might last right through to retirement. It was definitely out as a meeting place for him and Fornell the next night. Tobias proposed Gibbs' house. Then, shocked that the suggestion was shot down, his own. Gibbs said NCIS instead, and even offered to pick up the burgers.

The office was quiet. It was Sunday, Gibbs' team finally home for the day. The overheads were out for the night and the lighting was dim, centered around the glow of Gibbs' desk lamp. Fornell draped his suit jacket over Tony's empty chair and pulled it toward Gibbs' desk. "Hey, mood lighting. Romantic. Why aren't we at your house?"

Gibbs didn't say anything, busying himself with sweeping the stuff on his desk to the side, out of the way of the food.

"Let me guess. More termites."

"Something like that."

"And why aren't we at my house? Your termites catchy?"

"Could be."

"Uh huh." Tobias reached into the paper sack and pulled out a plastic tray with a burger in it, prying off the cover and taking a sniff. He passed it to Gibbs. "Mind telling me what you're up to, Jethro?"

Gibbs snagged the foil packets of fries, setting them on a napkin between them. "Up to?"

"Dargas is screaming for your head. Wants to put it on a pike in the lobby."

Gibbs shrugged, grinning wryly at his fries. Pissing off Dargas was about the only thing that went right yesterday, as far as he was concerned. "He's welcome to try. "Man's out of control. And those agents should be brought up on charges."

Wasn't the first time a few hothead Feds used the threat of rape to scare a minor. He knew that. But it sure as hell was the first time Gibbs had watched it happen - and the last. If they were on his team those agents would be in lockup right now - if they were lucky.

"Mmmph," Tobias said. It was a tricky situation. Dargas was savvy enough to keep his people out of anything clearly illegal. Or at least, anything likely to get them busted. Fornell picked up a fry and bit off its head. "He'll be up for retirement in two years. They'll push him out, break up his squad."

Gibbs shook his head.

"Yeah," Fornell said. "Trouble is he gets results, even if he does create an unholy mess along the way. Something like the way you operate, actually."

Gibbs glared at him, snatching up the baggie of ketchup packets. He was no Dargas.

"Well," Fornell continued, "I appreciate you keeping the incident quiet. The agents you _hijacked_ a suspect from are too damn embarrassed to raise a stink. You're lucky they're green. I'm not sure how much Dargas even knows." Tobias reached back into the paper sack, hoping for some stray ketchups. "Hard to tell, since his rage for you was already operating at full capacity."

The fact that it was a tip from Gibbs that cracked the search hadn't helped in the least.

"They're lucky all I did was hold a gun on them. And they're gonna wish they'd been reassigned to Juneau if Ziva ever sees either one of them again."

Fornell raised an eyebrow at the dark tone. Nothing those agents had done was technically illegal, far as he knew. But there'd been no camera on the interview. He didn't have the whole story. "File a complaint and we could take disciplinary measures."

Gibbs shook his head.

Tobias eyed him over his burger. He'd been doing this long enough to sniff out a cover up, even one orchestrated by Gibbs. The weird thing here was that Gibbs' team was doing the covering up, not Dargas'. "Of course, to lodge a complaint," he said leadingly, "you'd have to give up that kid's name."

Gibbs laughed, like Tobias said something hilarious. "Don't know his name."

Fornell frowned. Gibbs seemed sincere about that. But the anger at the FBI agents was personal . . . he shrugged. "Well, not much we can do about it through official channels, then."

When Tobias glanced up, Gibbs was sitting back in his chair. Looking at him with the  _I know you're holding out on me_  look. The _tell me all your secrets_ look.

Fornell sighed and threw him a bone. "I've got some feelers out to Internal Affairs." Which Gibbs probably already guessed. "If there'd been a stink about those two clowns the investigation into Dargas would've busted open too soon. He'd of dodged it, put it on his probies - probably gotten leeway 'cause one of his teams just lost three agents . . ." Fornell paused. "Don't ever tell anyone I said that." He frowned at Gibbs' little grin.  "Smug bastard. Now tell me why our trafficking squad even knows who you are."

Gibbs picked up his burger and took a big bite, chewing slowly as he shrugged. "Cartel in Colombia."

Tobias almost choked on a fry.

After Gibbs' totally unexplained reappearance from the middle of a Reynosa kidnapping spree, he'd expected to hear something, at least, about a cartel in Mexico. How many international criminal organizations had the man managed to piss off? No wonder they weren't eating at home.

"You don't say?" Fornell prompted. 

Gibbs shrugged again. "Got unfinished business."

Fornell took a long pull from his soda, studying the man across from him. "And that kid has something to do with it?"

Gibbs concentrated on his fries, picking several up, folding them together for chewing efficiency. "You ever tangle with drug runners in your section? Anything international?"

Tobias narrowed his eyes at the dodge. "Not often. Interstate trafficking gets shunted to Dargas and his goon squad. Anything national or international goes to their section chief. And the A-team agents."

Gibbs nodded.

Tobias crunched through a sour pickle, studying the man across from him. Well, what the hell. "I heard the head of the Reynosa cartel disappeared."

Gibbs investigated the little styrofoam pickle bucket for himself. "Yeah. Heard that too."

"Private plane up and vanished, apparently. Over the Caribbean. Paloma Reynosa and three of her top guys on board."

Gibbs sipped his coffee silently. How anyone could wash down a perfectly good burger with _coffee_ was beyond him.

"Just like that," Tobias said. "Poof." More sipping was the only response. That coffee must be empty by now. "It's almost like - well," he scratched his stubble thoughtfully. "Dark magic would be the - "

"We think it was a rival gang," Gibbs cut in drily.

Fornell grinned. "Not dark magic?"

Gibbs didn't deign to respond. Fair enough. Disappearing a whole planeload of people wasn't really Gibbs' style anyway.

"You know, that jet was flying awfully close to the Bermuda Triangle," Tobias said seriously. "Jinxed airspace."

"Right."

"Not too far from the coast of Colombia, come to think of it."

Gibbs looked at him, shook his head. Playing this one damn close to the vest, then.

They were quiet for a bit, munching their food. But that was alright. Jethro would bring him in on it when and if Tobias could ever lend a hand with the . . . fumigating.

"Hey," Fornell said. "Did I tell you I saw Diane stalking through the Homeland Security lobby last week? Had on a little black dress, red heels, whole nine yards."

They looked at each other and grinned. A little black dress and red heels meant big game.

"I wonder who she's got her claws into over there. I thought about distributing some leaflets, you know, a warning, but then I thought – this is Homeland Security! What if whoever it is deserves her? Could be a match made in heaven!"

Gibbs chuckled, binning his empty burger wrapper, and proposed his least-favorite DHS pencil-pusher.

* * *

  _a/n: If I had to pick a favorite NCIS episode, Internal Affairs and it's dark magic would be right up there._

_\- From NCIS Season 5 Episode 14: Internal Affairs -_

_Abby: You think there's a murderer here, like, right underneath Gibbs' nose. That whatever took place took place without Gibbs knowing._

_Fornell: And that could never happen._

_Abby: I'm going to share a secret with you. It's a theory I've been working on. Off the books._ _(She pauses to scope out the room for surveillance.)_ _Okay. The man . . . is magic. Like, dark magic. He has eyes and ears everywhere. He appears like a - a mist. Whenever I get a clue he just, materializes._

_Fornell: Maybe he bugged your lab._

_Abby: No. I checked._

_Fornell: What's that like? It sounds aggravating._

_Abby: No._

_Fornell: Does he ever get angry?_

_Abby: Never. He only uses his powers for good._

_Fornell: Well. Sounds like you're a fan._


	7. Back to School

Ziva was avoiding him.

He'd cornered her a couple times - she kept slipping away. It wasn't smart strategy on her part, since it only made him more pissed. Still, Gibbs let her get away with if for a few days, until the elevator doors slid open in front of him and she was already in it. Trapped.

Unfortunately she wasn't alone in there. He held the doors and stared at the two guys – Gibbs was pretty sure they were from Cyber Crimes – standing between him and his agent.

But the cyber guys didn't notice the elevator had even stopped. Somehow didn't realize they were on the business end of a Gibbs glare. They were too wrapped up in their conversation, jabbering fiercely about . . . well, Gibbs had no idea what they were jabbering about.

"Hey," he said, breaking up the debate. They looked up at him, blinking like moles who'd accidently pushed up into sunlight. "Get out."

They scurried away without even bothering to check which floor they were on.

Ziva, aware he'd been standing there from the moment the doors opened, didn't look at him when he appeared. Not when he kicked out the interlopers. Not when he stepped into the silent car and stopped it between floors.

He leaned against the side wall and watched her. She stood staring at the doors as if he wasn't there.

"There ever going to be an end to it, Ziva?"

"An end to what?"

"These secrets."

Of course she said nothing. When her defenses were up Ziva didn't respond to coaxing or reason. Cruelty, brute force, suspicion – 'tough love,' putting an optimistic spin on it – those were the tactics her first mentors trained her to recognize.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "We've got a rack of Tasers down in the equipment garage. That help you to _open up_?"

She stiffened. "No."

Gibbs kept control, but his own anger was there. Lurking beneath the words, easy to hear. "Yeah, didn't think so. But then I noticed that the kid didn't say a word either. You were right about that, he didn't make a sound. Not when they broke him. Not even when they stunned him. You know," he pressed forward again, cruel, and mocking, and suspicious. Just her style. "I was surprised."

Quiet.

"But you weren't," he observed.

Ziva breathed deeply, evenly. Silently.

Gibbs pushed off from the wall, came in close to crowd her, to whisper in her ear. "Do you think I need a Taser, Ziva?"

Her eyes jerked to him, meeting his gaze with another wave of anger. Losing another layer of control. "I have been trained to withstand torture, Gibbs. I doubt you could make me say anything. Not without committing several felonies."

"Don't tempt me," he muttered. But he backed off.

She was talking – somewhat. And he was way too aware that she hadn't simply trained to withstand torture. She had withstood it. Actual torture, not that she ever mentioned it. He doubted she ever would, not to him. Staying strong in front of authority was too engrained.

Ziva sighed, deflated, letting her eyes wander away from his.

She understood his anger.

She hated being behind the walls she put up, just as much as he seemed to hate that they were there. She threw them up on instinct, but she didn't always know how to take them down. Ziva breathed deeply once more, resolving to give him as much as she could. All that she could bear for him to know.

"Anyone with the training I have received would revert back to it when faced with a coercive interrogation," she said smoothly. Pointedly.

Gibbs eyes widened. "You think he's – what, gotten some kind of training? In coercion?" Coercion was code, of course, for torture.

"No," Ziva said, and hesitated. "I know he has."

Gibbs raised his hands, a gesture of impatience verging on explosion. "Yeah? You want to tell me how you know that?"

She glanced at him uncertainly, like she was torn over revealing a confidence. He reigned himself in, trying to get a handle on a relationship he didn't understand. The one between Gray and his agent. "Look," he said. "Gray needs protection. I can't do that if I don't know what I'm dealing with."

Hesitation again. She was beginning to bend, Gibbs could smell it. He narrowed his eyes and stepped forward, too close for comfort. Full-blown intimidation always worked like a blast of electricity here, surging through the confined metallic space, charging the air with expectation.

"You knew," he said. "That he would flash back to something when they questioned him. You thought a couple twerps from the FBI were going to break him. Break that –" His hands curled into fists at his sides. He could identify what Gray was, even if he didn't like it. " _Machine_. And you were right." Gibbs' voice carried lingering disbelief. "The cracks are invisible but you knew they were there. Your guard was up before he even stepped in that room - "

She blew out a breath and shook her head. "You think I have some piece of intelligence I have not shared! I do not _know_ anything, Gibbs. It is -  guesswork - "

"Tell me."

His voice settled over her like a block of concrete. Ziva held up a hand, a surrender, avoiding his eyes. "Alright," she said.

Gibbs backed off, and waited through a long silence.

"You remember when he had the fever," she said. "Before we were pulled out of the jungle?"

He nodded sharply.

"He was talkative. You said later that he gave nothing away, that he was drawing us out. That he – you thought that he was looking for information on me in particular, because he was not given my file . . . "

Ziva paused, but Gibbs remained silent. Of course he remembered.

"You were right about that," she said. "I told him that I was once Mossad, you recall? He asked me what that was, as if he did not know . . . But he knew . . . " she trailed off. "He must have known."

Gibbs shook his head. Mossad wasn't all that well known outside of intelligence communities and law enforcement. "How do you figure that?"

She hesitated yet again. "I don't think he wants us to know this," she said lowly.

He waited her out, letting her come to terms with betraying a secret she wasn't even supposed to have. Normally he would press at this point. But there was something touchy between Ziva and the kid, like an injury that had just healed, that was still tender. Not something to mess with.

Gibbs might be a bastard, but he wasn't brutal with his own people. He could be patient when the opposite would do more harm than good.

Ziva put a hand up to rub her forehead, began to pace in the tight space. He stepped back to lean against the far wall, following with his eyes.

"In the infirmary, when they first took him in, he was hallucinating." She looked at him quickly and Gibbs nodded. He remembered. How could he forget? The kid had been screaming, cries echoing in the tin can of a base.

"He began to struggle and the men held him down. It was only a few hours after I told him I was once with Mossad. I do not know – that may be – " she cleared her throat. "That may have played a part in bringing certain memories forward."

Ziva paused. The others did not understand the broken Spanish. But she had. "The things he said – when he was not conscious . . . "

She stopped her pacing and stood in front of a wall, staring at it in the low, buzzing solitude of the elevator. She drifted in the solitude of her thoughts, a world away from the proud man standing next to her. How could she explain? There were no words, and it loomed too large. To speak of it would invite it to subsume her. To touch that abyss would be to drown in it, even in her own mind. Even after all this time.

"They were familiar, Gibbs," she said finally, simply. "I believe he was trained to resist interrogation by a Mossad specialist. Or perhaps he was tortured by one," she said lowly. "The two are not so different."

She glanced at him. "That is all I know. The rest I deduced," she shrugged awkwardly, too aware of his eyes on her. "I assumed from the violence of the hallucination we witnessed that he would . . . that a difficult interrogation would hold unpleasant associations," she finally concluded, stiff and miserable."I have seen something similar before . . . in young detainees . . . trained in this way."

Gibbs digested that, studying her. There were plenty of ex-Israeli intelligence officers operating in South America, same as there were retired US specialists working there. Some of those operatives were legitimate, and played by the rules. But that kind of work also attracted men like Dean, who had been kicked out of their nation's service. Mercenaries willing to sell any violence asked of them to the highest bidder. No honor. No limits.

She was saying Gray had been tortured by a specialist like that - or perhaps trained to torture. Either one turned his stomach.

And the kid would most definitely not want them to know. That kind of experience would create windows, vulnerabilities. If you knew it was there. Ways to break him, just like they'd seen, even if the 'training' held true and he never spoke a word.

"You ever work there? In South America?"

"No," she said, with unmistakable relief.

But she had worked with young detainees, Gibbs noted. Any rough spots in that particular history would have been of interest to Kort . . .

"This have to do with whatever Kort has on you?"

She faced, running her eyes over him sharply. "No . . . not directly."

Gibbs shook his head. His team was the best, and he'd go to the ends of the earth for any one of them, just as they had for him. But being the best brought its own baggage. The crucibles that had tempered their skills, that made them so good in the first place, had also left their scars. And some days the baggage that they dragged around behind them and simply refused to let go absolutely drove him up the wall. "Well. I guess that answers the original question."

"What?"

"'Not directly,'" he mimicked. Exasperated. "Secrets, Ziva. No end in sight is there?"

She huffed. She had given him plenty, all the information he really needed, and she knew it. "Ah. And should I take you as my role model in that, Gibbs? By all means, go ahead. You first."

Gibbs let himself get pissed now, let his voice rise. He'd gotten as far as he was going to get with her today, anyway. "I'm not talking about your personal life, Ziva. Whatever Kort has on you is about the job. Either you trust us with it – you trust _me_ with it – or you don't."

The look she gave him wasn't shamed or secretive. It was confident, and colder than anything he had seen from her in a very long time. "You do not want to know my secrets. And Trent Kort knows nothing about me that will affect the team."

Gibbs felt his blood rise, felt his neck get hot with frustration. "If Kort knows, then you've got a leak. Anyone could know. Whatever it is it'll come out, Ziva." And he knew better than anyone how fucked up that could get. "Tell me about the situation and I can help you. We can prepare for it."

"There is no situation," she said firmly. "And there is no leak."

He ground his teeth. It wasn't that he didn't trust Ziva – he did. The problem always came back to her inability to trust him. To trust anyone. To be fair, these days it was more reluctance than an inability. She'd come a long way. But Gibbs didn't really care about fair. He just wanted her to come a little further. "Alright. Mind telling me how you're so sure there's no leak?"

She took a deep breath, looked at him carefully. Finally she straightened her back, and Gibbs felt a tingle go down his spine. He'd seen that posture before. He wasn't going to like this.

"Kort knows about it because he was there," she said.

Gibbs stared at her for a good long time. Then he turned away and flipped the switch, looking at the doors as the car began to move. He sure as hell didn't want to look at her. "You knew him before you came to NCIS."

"I had met him. Yes."

Gibbs' voice went quiet. "I don't remember that coming up when he was working the Frog. When we were trying to figure out who the hell he was. Or when he was putting a CIA op over your partner's life." That last one was the most quiet.

"I did not know his real name, Gibbs. I did not know he was CIA! When I recognized him with Rene Benoit I assumed that he really was working as an arms dealer. My prior . . . interaction with him – it was many years old, and a cover anyway – it was meaningless." She stared at the steel door in front of her, struggling stupidly to keep her voice steady. Cursing the fact that Gibbs' opinion meant so much to her, even as she chased it. "If I had relevant information at the time I would have told you. I swear to you."

When the doors opened he put out a hand to keep her in the car. "I never dug into your time at Mossad, Ziva. That's not how I operate. I trust my people to tell me what I need to know. I show you what it means to be a team, to work together." Well, most of the time. He was doing his best with that. She said nothing and he stepped in front of her, leaning in close again, searching her face. "You've been working for me now for five years, but I don't know if you've ever really been on the team. And I've got to wonder if in all that time you've learned a damn thing."

She met his stare, a flash of hurt in her gaze, a wound. But that was chased out by the flat, expressionless veneer of the old Mossad operative. His gut sank. Too far, he realized. That was too far.

"I have learned many things from you, Gibbs," she said. Voice smooth and steady now, slick as glass. "So many that after only five years I am a different person. That is all you need to know. All there is to know."

She stepped around him, heading toward her desk, leaving Gibbs to stare into an empty elevator.

**x**

The next break came just a few weeks later, 0300 on a Friday. Gibbs and Tony were sitting in a dark car, windows frosting in the December night, watching residents and their chosen parade of vices walk in and out of a fancy condo building. One of AK's lackeys lived there and the lackey's lackeys were visiting, so Gibbs and Tony were watching.

McGee and Ziva were on a stakeout across town, at yet another lackey's 24-hour convenience store. When Gibbs' phone rang it was right on the hour mark. He didn't bother to check the Caller ID – on a stakeout McGee always called to check in exactly on the hour.

"Yeah."

"Gibbs. Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

There was a beep on the line then. Probably McGee, coming through to call waiting.

"Hold on." Gibbs clicked over. "Report, McGee."

"Nothing's happening, Boss. Our guy stayed inside, no suspicious pick-ups or deliveries."

Gibbs grunted. "Call in again at 0400, then you can pack it up for the night."

He switched back to the other line. Trying to get himself killed? "Just trying to live life to the fullest, Kort."

"You have a strange way of trying to live life at all. You do realize that DC distributors of Calera products don't need a warrant to hunt you down, and everyone you know? They'll sniff you out if you keep arresting their little minions. He didn't drag you out of the jungle so that you could get yourself killed in your own backyard."

Yeah, Gibbs got that now. As far as he could tell they'd dragged him back to DC so that he could keep the kid's ass out of trouble. "What do you want?" Gibbs normally wouldn't deign to ask, but . . . "He in trouble?"

"I'm surprised you haven't tracked him down and asked him that yourself."

Gibbs felt a twinge in his gut. He'd been feeling it ever since he went to bail the kid out and didn't follow him home. He'd decided to go with what Gray said he wanted. Decided to let Gray keep the anonymity that he wore like armor. But that meant relying on the kid's judgement. And wasn't that why kids usually had adults deciding things for them? Because their judgement sucked? "He didn't seem to want me tracking him down," he said mildly. "Why, should I have?"

A pause on the other end of the line. Kort was taking his time. "Careful, Gibbs. You're dangerously close to earning some small measure of respect."

For the privacy, right. "I'll take that to mean he's fine."

"Yes. Gray's been in school. A good place to go, to learn new things."

Gibbs glanced at Dinozzo. Tony was staring at the condo, listening hard. "Oh yeah? And what kind of things would those be?"

"You might have heard about a school shooting last week?"

"Yeah. The nine-year-old." No Navy connection, no drug connection. Gibbs hadn't paid it much attention.

"Yes. A boy shot and killed on the playground after classes let out for the day. It was crowded, but no one saw a thing. All rather strange."

"And?"

"Go back to school, Gibbs." The line clicked off softly.

**x**

Ballou Elementary had metal detectors, rotating shifts of local LEOs assigned to it, and more students than the entire population of Gibbs' hometown.

Team Gibbs used their newfound popularity with Metro to grease their way into interviewing students. First stop was the principal, a petit dark-skinned woman with steel gray hair. Tony assumed she would be nice because they first saw her talking to a weepy third grader.

But when the kid turned away and her eyes fell on the agents, all pretense of nice went out the window.

"Gentlemen." She nodded at Ziva. "And lady. I am Principal Kurtz. If you'll come with me."

She led them to a crowded office, neat but small, that smelled of old carpet and humid summers. Gibbs sat in one of the two available chairs, both covered in wooly orange fabric, and his agents stood behind him.

"So. You are here about Matthew's death."

"Yes, ma'am."

"We report at least a dozen incidents to the police every year. I have never had occasion to speak with military police, Officer – pardon me, is Officer your title?"

"I'm Agent Gibbs."

"Agent Gibbs. You do realize that my students are well under enlistment age."

Gibbs kept his face recruiter-poker-straight. "Yes. We have reason to believe that the shooting here was related to an incident involving the murder of two Marines."

Tony reflected that "related" by six degrees of separation was still related.

Gibbs went on. "We understand that there were witnesses to Matthew's murder, but no useful information was brought to light?"

Principal Kurtz laced her hands in front of her and gave Gibbs a chilly smile. It was a smile that said she'd been on the receiving end of utter crap from generations of students. That his little brand of bullshit better step it up if he thought it was going to pass muster with her. "And you have the authority to interview my students, without their guardians' permission or presence, based on this 'related incident'?"

Damn. Tony shifted on his feet and exchanged an undetectable-to-outsiders wince with Ziva.

"No," Gibbs smiled. "Of course not."

Fact was, he'd been hoping to go ahead and do just that. The no-harm no-foul approach to interviews, provided no one's legal department got involved. Without parents or lawyers hovering around they could have pushed some kid or other into spilling his guts, Gibbs was sure.

Foiled, though. By the principal. Time for Plan B.

Gibbs should be pissed, but couldn't help laughing a little, way down deep inside. Sometimes he liked people who gave him hell. It was a hard thing to predict. "We'd just like to introduce ourselves to any witnesses, explain who we are and what we're trying to do. Leave contact information in case anyone remembers something they would like to share with us."

Principal Kurtz's stare was as steely as her hair.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "Unless you aren't interested in identifying Matthew's killer?"

"Do not presume, Agent Gibbs, to understand my interests. It is my duty to keep the children in this school as safe as I possibly can. Coming forward as a witness to this particular crime is not conducive to student safety."

Gibbs frowned. "We'll protect anyone who comes forward."

Kurtz smiled thinly. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

You could tell she'd used that exact same tone to scold decades of wayward children for sticking wads of gum to the bottoms of their desks.

She rose to her feet. "There were fifty-six students and two monitors on the playground that day. I'd prefer that the students miss as little class time as possible. You can speak to them in groups of six or seven and then interview the monitors separately. I'll supervise the meetings and put a halt to them if I hear or see anything at all objectionable, is that clear?"

"Fifty-six witnesses?" Gibbs didn't yell, exactly. It was his indoor yelling voice. "And no one saw anything?"

Kurtz stood there looking at him, a petite pillar of iron, and raised a flinty eyebrow. "Of course they saw something, Agent Gibbs. They saw a child gunned down on his own school playground. They saw him bleed to death before their eyes. Now they go to class and see his empty desk. Tell me, are you here to protect them from that?"

Gibbs opened his mouth, but didn't get the chance to say anything.

"No. You are not. You are pursuing some vengeance of your own." She looked him up and down. "For your dead Marines, perhaps. You are not here for Matthew. My students are young, but they are not stupid. They have learned well who holds the power here, and how to protect themselves." She moved toward the office door. "You use that tone with them and I'll have you removed from this building."

"What about the adults," Gibbs growled. "The monitors."

Principle Kurtz paused. "They have children of their own. Ones they would like to see grow up."

And with that she walked out, leaving an investigative trail of destruction in her wake. Tony and McGee and Ziva sort of averted their eyes, studying the minutiae of the office until the boss recovered and managed to adjust himself from Plan A, which involved using forty collective years of experience to interrogate easily manipulated children, to Plan B, which consisted entirely of giving a vague sort of speech under the watchful eye of Frau Kurtz. A plan that would almost certainly be useless and therefore a waste of Valuable Boss Time.

Gibbs decided that he and Ziva would talk to the kids while Tony and McGee spoke to the monitors. It was singularly boring. Fidgety, defiant, closed-mouthed six to thirteen-year-olds listened as he explained about the two U.S. Marines who had been killed. He asked every group if they had family serving and wasn't surprised when two-thirds of the kids raised their hands every time. He explained that NCIS was the police force that protected people in the Navy and Marines, and that Matthew's shooting might have had something to do with the death of the Marines.

Ziva explained that anyone with information about what happened to Matthew could come to the Navy Yard to speak with an agent or call the number on the cards they were given, day or night. Of course she also mentioned that the Navy had very sophisticated equipment available to track down prank callers, and that the punishment for pranking Navy cops was walking the plank, into a shark tank. It was, after all, her number on those cards. She asked if there were any questions. Every single group had a boy or two who wanted to see her gun – and, it was implied, the rest of her attributes – and then they moved on to the next group.

Gibbs thanked Principal Kurtz sincerely, his respect for her devotion to her kids clear, but he stalked out of the school more pissed than a kid-oriented afternoon had ever left him before. If children were afraid for their lives, there was no way that a speech about protecting sailors was going to convince them to come forward.

It was a wasted day, a fool's errand at Kort's call, and that pissed him off even more.

Four days later Gibbs was in no better mood when McGee interrupted him during an interrogation. Gibbs was leaning on what felt like the eight-hundredth dope peddler of the week, a kid who clearly did not go to Principal Kurtz's school of life, since he seemed too essentially stupid to even grasp Gibbs' questions. As soon as the interrogation room door swung shut behind him Gibbs turned on McGee, growling with all the fury that a whole week of painfully stupid pushers could kindle.

"You have got to be kidding me, McGee."

Tim talked fast. "Boss, security just called up. There are two girls here to see you. They wouldn't say what they want to talk to you about and only one would give her name. It's - she said it's Cassandra Gray."


	8. Secrets

Cassandra Gray?

"Take that idiot back down to holding," Gibbs nodded toward interrogation as he walked away. "You had security send the girls up?"

"Yes, Boss!" McGee called after him.

They were standing by the windows near the bullpen. Two girls and one of the security guys from the lobby. Gibbs nodded at the guard, who nodded back and spun away, returning to his post downstairs. And then it was just Gibbs and the girls. A tall one and a short one, both dressed in dark pants and white button-down shirts. School uniforms.

"I'm Agent Gibbs." He held out his hand. "And you are?"

"Cassie." The tall one touched his hand in a lightning-fast shake. "This is Amelia."

Cassie was tall and athletic, long dark hair tucked behind her ears, bright, dark eyes. She watched him carefully.

"Amelia." Gibbs stuck out his hand. The smaller girl considered him a few seconds and reached out to shake his hand slowly, peering at him from under a halo of brown curls.

Neither of the girls were among the kids they met at the school.

"Are you here about the shooting at Ballou Elementary?"

"Yes." Cassie answered for both of them.

"Okay. Let's go somewhere we can talk."

Gibbs led them up to a conference room. Amelia lagged behind a little, staring around the office in wonder until Cassie took up her hand and pulled her along. Gibbs stopped at the door of one of the smaller meeting rooms and gestured them in.

Cassie approached cautiously, took one glance into the room and backed abruptly away, guiding Amelia behind her. She stopped about ten feet off and fixed steady eyes on Gibbs. Watching for any sudden movement, it looked like.

Gibbs looked her over for signs of a recent attack. He didn't find any, beyond her behavior. There was something older, though. He'd noticed damage to her right arm downstairs, but with the long-sleeved shirt it was hard to tell exactly what was there. The back of her right hand was discolored, scarring disappearing up under her sleeve, reappearing where the collar of her shirt met the side of her neck. It continued up part of the right side of her face, barely visible as it faded into a smooth cheek.

She was what, fifteen? But that scarring was already old.

She didn't seem self-conscious about the hand, and Gibbs let his eyes rest on it for a moment. Some kind of burn. When his eyes drifted back up to her face she was looking right at him, more determination than fear in her gaze.

It was painfully obvious that Cassandra Gray wasn't about to go into a closed-off room with a man she'd just met, come hell or high water. Or even get within ten feet of him.

"Would you like me to call another agent?" he asked mildly.

"Where's Ziva?" the girl asked slowly.

"She's here. Would you like me to call her?"

Cassie nodded, retreating with Amelia to the edge of the balcony. She watched him as he walked to one of the random internal phones bolted to the walls throughout the building. Amelia leaned against the steel railing and peered out over the bullpen, utterly fascinated by the hustle and bustle, shyness forgotten as curiosity took over.

Ziva was in Abby's lab. "Third floor conference room," he ordered. "Now."

Gibbs leaned against the wall by the phone while they waited, not particularly looking at the girls – allowing Cassie to observe him unobserved. Ziva made it up in under three minutes.

Gibbs nodded toward their visitors. "Ziva, this is Cassandra Gray, she goes by Cassie. And this is Amelia."

Ziva shot him a look at Cassie's name and then slid her gaze to the girls. "Hello, Amelia," she smiled, shaking the little girl's hand and turning toward Cassie. "And Cassie."

The girl didn't respond. She stared at Ziva, eyes roaming over the agent's face and hair. "You're Ziva?"

"Yes. Agent Ziva David."

Eventually Ziva dropped her hand and studied the girl back. "Is something wrong?"

"You are just like her," Cassie said faintly.

"Just like who?"

The girl looked surprised, and that snapped her out of the reverie. She shook her head.

Ziva managed to pull out the polite inquisitive face, rather than the irritated killer one. "I am afraid I do not understand. You are sure everything is alright?"

"Yeah," Cassie said slowly. "Yes. Sorry. Um, I think Agent Gibbs wants to use that conference room?" She pointed at the door.

"Right." Ziva put away her confusion and turned to lead them in, but Gibbs gestured subtly for her to wait, waving Cassie and Amelia in first. His turn to be curious.

The older girl sat Amelia in the chair closest to the door and herself in the spot next to it, as close as possible to the exit without turning her back to it. Protective of the younger one, and very aware of her surroundings.

Gibbs and Ziva took the chairs across from Cassie.

"So. What can we do for you?" He looked from one girl to the other, and settled on the older one.

"Amelia has information about the kid that was killed at Ballou," Cassie said. She rested her arms on the table and clasped her hands together firmly.

Gibbs glanced from Cassie to Amelia. Going to a school, to the scene of a crime, and hoping for teacher leniency was one thing, but . . . "I'm not really supposed to talk to either of you without a guardian's permission, or at least a child welfare advocate present."

Amelia looked anxiously to Cassie to deal with that, and the older girl spoke up again. "Amelia wants to keep her involvement quiet. She doesn't want to testify or be a formal witness, so she doesn't need a guardian here. But what she knows could help you."

The girl spoke with just the slightest Spanish accent. Almost a lilt.

There was a significant pause.

Gibbs rested an elbow on the table and put his chin in his hand. "Uh huh . . ."

A shadow of a grin flashed across Cassie's face. "And she will tell you this useful information. In exchange for your help in return, of course."

"Oh, of course. And what kind of help would that be?"

"She can't live here once she rats," Cassie said bluntly. "They might find out. Amelia has a sister in California. She wants to go live with her."

Once she rats.

Gibbs glanced between the two girls again. This was a far cry from his usual negotiations. For one thing, no one from legal was even in the room.

"And what does her sister have to say about that?"

"She wants me to come!" Amelia blurted, voice bright. Then she shrank back, clearly startled that she'd spoken – a little girl who couldn't contain her big news.

Gibbs shifted his gaze to look at her. "Who do you live with now, Amelia?"

But the girl had gone quiet again, staring back at him from under that soft cloud of hair.

"With foster parents," Cassie answered for her.

Gibbs sighed. "Why wasn't Amelia placed with her sister before now?"

"Well. It is really her sister-in-law. She just married Amelia's brother."

Gibbs' index finger began to massage his temple. "And why wasn't Amelia placed with her brother?"

"He wasn't old enough, at first," Cassie said neutrally. "Then he was in some trouble. But he cleaned up and enlisted. He's deployed now."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? Marines?" How convenient.

Cassie looked at him, and suddenly – well, her face was still straight. But her eyes were smirking. "He is a Ranger."

Gibbs sat back slowly in his chair, exchanging a glance with Ziva. "I met some Rangers recently."

"Yes?"

Too mild. She _knew_.

"Amelia's brother wouldn't be anyone I know, would he?"

"No."

"Okay," he said wryly. This was surreal. "Either way I can't really interfere in foster care."

"Sure you can," Cassie said calmly.

Calm Cassie, Gibbs thought, his eyes roving over her face. He had to admit this girl made for an interesting interview. He had seen her fear, knew it was there despite the bold front. And he knew enough to recognize that kind of caution, to know that he didn't even want to guess at where it came from.

But whatever had happened, she wasn't letting it get the best of her. She was brave.

"You can call her case worker and encourage a home visit," she was saying. "And then you can recommend placement with her brother. It will have more weight coming from someone like you."

Gibbs frowned at that, looking at Amelia more closely. "A home visit will result in Amelia being removed from the family?"

"Yes."

"And how do you know she'll be placed with her brother? Especially when her brother is deployed?"

Cassie shrugged. "He's married, got an income, bought a house and everything. He is a relative, even if he has been in some trouble before. Hopefully with your influence that will be enough."

She said that like she expected his influence to be profound.

"And if it isn't?"

She returned his gaze like he'd better hope that it was. "That would be disappointing. But we would find another way to get her out of DC."

" _We_?"

"Yeah."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Us. Not you."

Helpful. Gibbs thought over what he'd just learned, glancing at Amelia again. Even surreal, this negotiation was light years better than anything involving a lawyer. For one thing, it was going fast, no bull - Calm Cassie did not beat around the bush. For another, this girl was well-informed. She knew about his latest adventure in Colombia, at any rate, and seemed to have anticipated the questions he was asking. Whatever her information was, it promised to be good.

"Is this home visit going to be staged or the real thing?"

"Both," she said cryptically.

He took that to mean that the reasons would be real, and the visit would be sure to uncover them.

"Oh, and the reward."

Gibbs pulled up his blank face. "Reward?"

Cassie's small smile was for real that time, not just a shadow. Apparently she found his blank face amusing. "The police are offering a $30,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Matthew's killer," she explained, suddenly very helpful. "That would make a nice college fund for Amelia."

Ziva shifted beside him, probably in disbelief. For his part Gibbs swallowed a grin, scratching his forehead to cover it. Cocky _and_ smart. This was so much better than leaning on dope pushers.

"Yeah," Gibbs said finally. "Thirty grand probably would. But the reward is for a conviction. That means being an official witness, testifying in court, the whole show."

"You won't need testimony. Her information is enough."

He narrowed his eyes. If he wasn't going to "need" testimony then she definitely knew something he didn't. Or thought she did.

"Hm." Gibbs folded his arms in front of him. "It's convenient that the one witness willing to step forward has a Ranger brother and a place to hide on the other side of the country. Plus a reason to get out of DC anyway."

"Yes."

"It's perfect. Might even call it a coincidence," Gibbs said.

"Call it what you want."

Cassie was too confident. He wondered if she was actually older than he'd pegged her. Sixteen, seventeen?

Gibbs let his gaze drift out the window for a moment. They had nothing solid going on Preacher or AK, and Kort seemed to think this school shooting was important to Gibbs' Calera hunt. Important for some reason, he reflected irritably, that was thus far known only to Kort.

It wasn't like he didn't want the little girl out of a bad foster situation anyway, if that's really what it was.

"Alright," Gibbs sighed. "What do you know."

"Hold on," Cassie said. "If this works and you do not come through for Amelia, Gray won't deal with you anymore. Ever. That won't be good for you." Her tone held an understanding of "won't be good" that no girl her age should carry. "It would not be smart to screw us over," she finished.

He considered her dark, serious eyes. She was here as some kind of proxy for Gray, then.

"So Gray is . . . your brother?"

They didn't look related, beyond the hair. Cassie's coloring was darker. Gray's physique was more slender.

"Cousin? Friend?"

She ignored him. "The deal?"

"How do I know that Amelia's brother and sister-in-law will offer her a better situation?"

"Gray says they will."

"No, you say they will. And I'm afraid I don't just believe what I'm told, no matter who says it. I have to check."

Cassie considered that. "You can check. And you can break the deal if any of the important parts aren't true. If Amelia won't be in a good situation with her brother. Or if her information does not give you the killer. But if those two things are true, you make the move to California and the reward happen."

Gibbs raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And you'll just rely on my word? That's very trusting." She didn't even want to walk in a room with him ten minutes ago.

Cassie flushed a bit, glanced between him and Ziva. She'd obviously caught what he was referring to, though he really hadn't meant her to. He had no intention of embarrassing a young girl for her fear.

Gibbs revised her age in his head, again. She could be as young as fourteen, he thought, looking over her face carefully. A sharp mind could make a child seem older than she was . . .

"Gray says you'll come through," she said finally, chin up despite the lingering embarrassment.

So Gibbs himself didn't matter – her trust in Gray was absolute.

Even if it didn't help in his drug crusade, if this information led to the little boy's murderer it would be worth it. Hell, if it got Amelia out of a screwed up home it would be worth it. There was no bad option here, it was win-win-win.

Gibbs shook his head. Gray, maybe Kort, had made sure of that. And delivered by a sweet little girl, too. Nicely played.

"Alright," he said. "It's a deal. The reward if the information gives us a conviction, that's all I can do as far as the money goes. California if the information leads to Matthew's killer."

And maybe a move to California either way. That would depend on the results of the home check.

Cassie nodded. "Okay."

And that was that.

She turned to Amelia and gestured to the agents across the table. "Tell them."

Amelia had been following the conversation avidly, face swiveling back and forth between her protector and the cops like an announcer at a tennis match. When all eyes suddenly shifted to her she actually ducked.

Cassie leaned down to whisper some quick reassurance in her ear. Amelia's voice, when she spoke up a second later, was high and clear. "Well, so I go to Ballou? I was in my homeroom after school let out cause I forgot my notebook and I went back to get it." She fidgeted and glanced around the room, sneaking peeks at Gibbs and Ziva. "And my homeroom, it has windows so you can see the playground and I was looking to see if my friend Kaylee was there and I saw everything that happened that day that Matthew – when he got shot."

"Okay," Gibbs said. "What did you see, Amelia?"

"There was some older boys there, like eighth graders or high school boys? And some of them go to Ballou and some of them don't, so I didn't recognize all of them. And one of them who goes somewhere else had a gun and he was showing it off. They were standing in a circle all around it but I could see cause I was looking down at them, from the window?"

She looked up, and Gibbs nodded that he understood.

"And then they were kind of shoving each other but I couldn't hear what they were saying or anything. The windows was closed. But I heard the gun go off and I ducked and when I looked again everybody was running away except for Matthew."

"Do you know who the boy with the gun was?"

Amelia looked at Cassie.

"They call him LC," Cassie said. "For Little Capo. He goes to Lafayette. His uncle is AK."

Gibbs' fingers had been moving a little restlessly through all that, tapping the armrests of the chair. They stilled. Beside him he felt Ziva draw up in her chair a bit, like a snake scenting prey. Like she always did when they _had_ it.

Cassie dug into the pocket of her pants and slid a piece of paper across the table. "This is his address. LC's I mean. I think you know where his uncle lives."

Gibbs picked up the piece of paper and glanced at it. A DC street.

"LC is a punk," she went on casually. "He will crack if you interrogate him. Word is he knows all about his uncle's business, too. AK has been trying to bring him into it, that is what LC is bragging. Is that information good enough?"

Gibbs looked up from the paper to meet her eyes. "If he cracks," he said. "For Matthew. Yeah."

And if it got them AK . . .

Gibbs wondered idly what sort of gift would blow the mind of a girl Cassie's age. She was in that gray area, between an eight-year-old Kelly and the present-day Abby, that he didn't really know much about. The teenage years.

"He will sing," Cassie said firmly. "Like Beyonce." She slid a second piece of paper across the table. "Amelia's case worker. And the case supervisor's name is on there too, and her foster parents."

Gibbs picked it up, looked at it, tucked it lazily in his pocket along with the address.

Cassie watched his movements. "Do you need anything else?"

Gibbs looked between the two girls, taking his time before focusing on Amelia. "I'd like to know why you didn't tell this to the police before, Amelia."

Amelia turned to Cassie, but surprisingly the older girl was quiet, simply returning Amelia's look. The she tipped her head toward Gibbs in a silent _Go on_.

Amelia looked back at Gibbs and eventually whispered, "Cass said I don't have to answer. If I don't want to."

Gibbs gave her a wry smile, not surprised to find she'd been coached just like Mateo. He returned her look with one that radiated honesty, something that in his experience rarely failed to work with kids. "No, you don't have to. I would like to know why you didn't go to the police, though."

The brown eyes looking back at him weren't really reluctant. They were confused. Like she didn't understand the question.

Of course, none of the other witnesses to the murder came forward . . . .

Gibbs glanced at Cassie, who was definitely looking at him like he was an idiot. He reminded himself that her entire purpose here seemed to be arranging protection for the one witness they'd managed to coax out.

Right.

"How about why you're coming to talk to us now?"

The girl glanced at Cassie again, and after getting another nod, shrugged. "Well, I told Kaylee what I saw, which was dumb okay, and then she told her mom and her mom _freaked_. And she told Andre and Andre talked to his boys and one of them told Cass, he said cause he was worried maybe other people would find out and I'd be in trouble? But Cass said she knew some cops who maybe if I helped them out then they would help us out."

"Who's Andre?"

Amelia smiled brilliantly. "My brother. He emails me every chance he gets, from Ramadi."

She pronounced it perfectly. "Oh yeah?" he smiled. "I've been there myself. Pretty far away."

Amelia sat up straight and leaned forward until her body was pressed against the edge of the table, looking at Gibbs like he was a cross between Santa Claus and the Grim Reaper.

It was a look he'd seen plenty of times before.

"It's really dusty," she said, a question to it.

"Sure is." Gibbs kept his eyes on Amelia. "You're right about that. So Andre was worried and told Cass about it? They're friends?"

"Um . . . " Amelia turned to Cassie. Not because she didn't want to answer – this one she clearly didn't know. And Amelia suddenly wanted to make sure that Gibbs, who had been to Ramadi and come back, got the answers he was looking for.

Gibbs let his gaze turn to Cassie too.

She rolled her eyes at his effortless bid to charm the younger girl and ensure her cooperation. Well, transparent might be the better word. Ramadi hadn't been effortless in the least.

"I've never met Andre," Cassie said. "He knows some people I know."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. Some people. Meaning Rangers like Rodge and Pete? Or people from the neighborhood, possibly. Like Gray.

"That all?" she pressed.

She was uncomfortable with questions that led back to her. Gibbs pulled on his friendliest smile and relaxed back into his chair anyway. She might be uncomfortable, but compared to Gray, Cass was a regular chatty Cathy. He might as well . . .

"Maybe. I'd like to know who Ziva here reminded you of."

Cassie glanced between him and Ziva. Clearly not charmed by Gibbs' smile.

"Of course," she said after a moment. The voice was still preternaturally calm, but a little colder now. "You like to know others' secrets, but never give up your own. You understand this makes you . . . suspicious. Secretive people are hard to trust."

"Well, if you know what Gray knows then you've already got most of my secrets," Gibbs said easily.

"Do you think so?" Her eyes were very sharp. They reminded him of Ducky's shrewd gaze, on those rare occasions when the doctor decided to test his psych degree against Gibbs' head. "But those are not really your secrets, are they? I think that I know only what you have not bothered to hide," she said.

Gibbs let his smile fade. He'd ignored the fact that she wasn't as calm as she appeared. That she'd been controlling her fear from the moment she walked in here. He was pretty sure he was about to pay for that.

Cass studied his features, her look on the aggressive side of defensive. It was unlikely that the conversation was going to swing back around to her - not if she had anything to say about it.

"Why you did not bother to hide these things – that is a mystery, Agent Gibbs. Maybe you wanted to be caught. And then somewhere along the way you changed your mind? Do you even know? It is very curious. Your agents must wonder too, if they do not already know. But I think you have never told this secret to anyone." She appraised him cooly. "Since you are so interested in secrets, perhaps you would like to tell me now?"

Ziva leaned forward, probably to unleash the riot act, but Gibbs put up an arm. The girl in front of him projected a confident front, but they were on his turf, and he'd pushed. He was lucky she was only pushing back.

What she wasn't doing was running, even though the deal she'd come for was settled. That was interesting.

"That's a good catch," he said softly, keeping his eyes on hers. Keeping himself open, though it went against the grain. She was smart, he'd give her that. And her bid for misdirection wasn't half bad. But he'd been interrogating for a long time. "I think my people do wonder about that. So, whoever Ziva reminded you of, that's a secret?"

Cass stared at him for a long moment. And then, just a little, she relaxed. The look she gave him was a degree or two warmer. Like maybe she'd decided to cut him some slack. Like maybe he'd passed a test.

"No, Agent Gibbs. It is not a secret at all. Gray is just shy sometimes, you know? He feels safer if others do not know anything about him. About the things that are important to him. This is like you, I think. If what I have heard of you is true."

"But not like you?"

"No," she said seriously.

"No secrets?" He propped his head on his hand again, grinned. "Really?"

"How have yours worked out for you?"

He smiled faintly at her. "Point."

"I think you are lucky your team has survived them. Secrets are like lies. Maybe they make you feel safe, but really they are dangerous, and they eat at trust like termites. So I will tell you, if you're really that curious. Agent David looks very much like Gray's mother."

Gibbs frowned into the silence. "And why is that a secret?"

Cass shrugged. "I just told you that it is not."

Gibbs cocked an eyebrow at her.

"He misses her," she said, looking just a shade uncomfortable. Then she smiled, and the discomfort was gone. It was replaced by the cunning Ducky look.

Gibbs braced himself.

"And then there are the boys in Agent David's file," Cassie said. "Gray knows he reminds her of them."

She waited. Gibbs stared at her blankly.

"The mission in Colombia was already complicated enough," Cassie went on. "And your agents did not trust him, not at the start. It would not have helped for Agent David to know that she reminds him of someone, too. Discretion isn't the same as keeping secrets."

Silence.

The boys in her file?

"No," Ziva said.

Cassie'e eyes slid innocently from Gibbs to the agent beside him. "No?"

"Gray does not have my file." Ziva's voice was smooth and hard, granite in audio waves. "Not from . . . that time."

"Kort was reluctant at first," Cassie nodded. "But we do not share your fondness for secrecy. Not from each other. Kort told us everything before Gray left with you for Camp Six."

"No. You are wrong."

Cassie didn't say anything, just stared back at Ziva.

Ziva leaned forward abruptly, the physical intimidation instinctive. "He does not know." Violence clawed around the edges of her voice, way beyond appropriate for the situation. Out of the corner of his eye Gibbs noticed Amelia slowly press back into her seat, like a rabbit who'd just spotted a cougar.

Incredibly, Cassie was unfazed. "You are used to hiding things," she said calmly. "So you assume that others do not know. And Gray let you assume this. Perhaps because your teammates really do not know?" Her voice was positively sly. "Gibbs looks very curious."

Ziva stared at the girl.

"Our review of your file was not as thorough as it was for your teammates. We did not read it directly, or see the images," Cassie said slowly. Relentlessly spilling information. Gibbs actually felt a twinge of guilt - this was payback, at least in part, because he'd pushed. "The photographs, I mean. If that is what concerns you? But we had to know, before he went in with you. We had to know who you are."

Cassie frowned at Ziva, and Gibbs turned more of his focus to his agent. He was close enough to see fine tremors in her hands.

Cassie sighed. "Secrets, you see? They are more trouble than they are worth. We have always kept them just for enemies, and I do not consider you an enemy. You deserve to know what we already do."

The girl finally turned her attention back to Gibbs. "Now do you feel you have all you need?" she asked flatly.

He scratched his chin. All he needed? This was the most productive conversation he'd had in months. Assuming Ziva survived the fallout. "Yeah. For now. How do we contact you?"

"Why would you need to do that?" She stood up. "Amelia's brother will be in touch about the reward once she's safe with him. Come on, Amelia."

Cassie walked out of the room quickly, head high, stride long, Amelia trailing.

"You stay here," Gibbs muttered to Ziva. She was so frozen he wasn't sure she heard him. He followed the girls out, closing the door behind him.

He guided Cassie to a bench where they could wait for an escort, noting her crisp uniform and good shoes, the nice backpack over her shoulder. He didn't know what Gray's situation at home was, but the kid was always kind of scruffy. Gibbs could reassure himself, looking at Cassie, that someone was at least taking care of this one.

Amelia made a bee-line for the balcony railing. It was just past 1800 now and she stood there enthralled, watching the end of day bustle while Gibbs called down for a guard to guide them out – specifically asking for a female officer this time.

"Thanks for your help, Amelia," Gibbs said to the oblivious little one's back. "Cassie," he nodded seriously to her. "Thank you."

She actually laughed, amused that he was thanking her for the bomb she'd just dropped, and turned to follow the guard.

"Hey, Cass?"

The girl turned at Gibbs' call. He nodded toward Amelia, still pressed against the railing. "She going to be alright until the home review goes through?"

"You'll call the case worker? Today?"

"Yep."

Cassie nodded. "She will be fine."

"Sure?"

"Yes." But she hesitated before turning away again, pressing her lips together as she cast a look back toward the door of the meeting room. Where Ziva still sat. "Gray said - he said you would understand."

Gibbs nodded solemnly. "She'll be fine."

Cassie smiled, and took Amelia's hand to pull her down the stairs.


	9. Like Redemption

Gibbs had the case worker on the phone before the girls were out of the building. He called the supervisor, too, while McGee put through paperwork for a warrant on sixteen-year-old "Edward Greene" - aka Little Capo.

It was half an hour before he made his way back up to the conference room. Ziva had her elbows on the table, head buried in her hands, exactly as he'd left her.

Gibbs poured a glass of water and set it in front of her, taking a chair on the opposite side of the table.

He waited five minutes, looking at the top of her head, mulling over Cassandra Gray's words. Kids. Photographs. With what he did know of Ziva's past that was enough, really. Not only to see what she was hiding, but why she'd been so determined to hide it from him.

"You want me to get someone else?"

She looked up at him, faint confusion the only emotion in dry, dull eyes. 

She'd already lost one father, she thought. Now she would likely lose another.

"It's tearing you up, Ziva, whatever it is. You don't want to talk to me, that's fine." He wished she would. That she would just trust him. But their relationship was complicated by the job, and the past . . . all those secrets, Gibbs thought tiredly. The kid was right about that. Gibbs' people didn't often confide in him, even when they were in trouble. It'd taken a long time for him to really care, and even longer for it to occur to him that this might be the reason why – that Cassie was right, that secrets made you hard to trust.

Gibbs studied her dispassionately. She'd walled herself off again.

"You want me to call Tony?"

That got a reaction. Something between a gag and a scoff, choking up her throat.

Okay. Not Dinozzo. "Ducky?"

Ziva shoved herself into an upright posture, hands curling into fists on the table. She pressed the tremors out of them. Gibbs watched them retreat up into her body and settle there.

"Please do not tell them." She kept her eyes on her hands.

"I don't know anything," he reminded her. "So even if I wanted to . . . "

"You know that I am not the same person, now." A demand. A plea.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I know that."

She stood up. "Then I am fine. The past is irrelevant."

She actually believed what she was saying, he thought.

"I would like to return to work now, Gibbs."

He tilted his head up to look at her and shifted irritably. "You think you're gonna make it to the end of the day, Ziva? The week? Sit down." She sat in the chair like he'd ordered her to climb onto the gallows. "What exactly are you afraid of? That I'll turn you in?" he asked sardonically. "That we'll share cells?" Reminding her that she could nail him for murder if she really wanted to, not to mention the unholy conspiracy of a coverup that was the only thing keeping Gibbs out of prison for the last twenty years.

"No. But you will not – " she hesitated.

Respect her? Accept her? Or stick by her, like her father should have. She would probably always wonder, when push came to shove.

"I didn't dig into your time at Mossad, Ziva. But I've got eyes. I don't think I'll be too surprised."

She nodded, but still wouldn't look at him.

"Whatever it was in the past, it's helping now," he pointed out. "With the kid. You're good with him."

She shook her head. "He knew. From the beginning - " Awful wonder in her voice.

They sat there in silence for what felt like a long time. She was mulling it over, working toward it, and he gave her the time.

"I was not supposed to be an assassin," she said finally. "My father wanted us to . . . climb the ladder? To be of the professional class. He wanted his children to have clean hands."

She laughed harshly, seized the water in front of her and drank half of it down. "This did not turn out so well. Ari was the doctor. You know how that ended. I was to be an intelligence analyst, so I studied languages. That is a good route to promotion within government service."

Quiet.

"Do you know what distinguishes the most promising young intelligence operatives?" she asked abruptly.

"No."

"Interrogation. That is what my superiors at Mossad believed, anyway. And they thought I was very promising." The last of the water disappeared. "But not for the reasons that you – encourage – " she stumbled.

Gibbs nodded.

"I went directly from boot camp into intelligence work. I was nineteen. And then Tali was . . . we had pieces only of her. To bury." She managed to raise her eyes from the table up to Gibbs' shirt. "It was an exciting time to be in intelligence," she said dully.

Ziva would have been nineteen in 2001. Gibbs ran a hand around his mouth. "I bet," he said.

"You know enough, don't you. To know what I have done," she said tiredly. "There were four of them. You can read the file, see the pictures. I will tell Kort to give it to you . . . I will resign, transfer. Whatever you think best."

He leaned forward on his elbows, lacing his fingers together in front of him. "I don't care about the file, Ziva."

"It is remarkable that he has it," she said idly. So far away she hadn't heard him. "Or has seen it, at least. Kort is extremely resourceful." The incident was sealed, even within Mossad.

"What happened?"

Ziva fidgeted, angry little movements. "What does it matter? The circumstance, explanations – that is all excuses, yes? But there is no excuse. I was angry, Gibbs, that is what happened. I was angry." She set her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her palms, like her head was too heavy to hold up. She didn't say anything for a good long time.

"Where?" he prompted.

"A black site in Eastern Europe." She paused, rubbed roughly at her forehead. "It was extremely hot. Even in October."

She pressed her fingertips down into her hair to keep them still. "There was no oversight," she said. "The mandated medical staff was not present. Not that they would have interfered if they were there. You have read the reports from that time."

Of course he had. Inquiries into torture. "This place was operated by the CIA?"

"In part. Kort was there very briefly. They told me he was an arms dealer who had become an informant. I remember him because he . . . he did not make a secret of despising us." Her voice was so flat it was tinny. She was disassociating in front of his eyes.

"Why's that?"

"Because of the younger ones. Children of fanatics. Younger . . . brothers. Arrested with suspicious materials, or in suspicious places. Gray's age, perhaps. We exercised them outside . . . "

He was quiet. She would get there eventually.

" . . . interviewed them in the morning. The techniques were legal," she paused, face blank, and carried on. "The younger ones were more afraid than the adults, but also more resilient. More aggressive . . . it was terror or stupid bravado, always, no inbetween. Like Cassie, I think. She was afraid of you, wasn't she? That is why you called me."

Gibbs nodded.

"And still she provoked you, determined to show no weakness. No fear," Ziva added softly.

He let her stare at the table for a minute before prodding her on. "Cassie tried to be brave," he conceded. "I didn't catch any stupidity."

Ziva ran a nail along a seam in the table, following it with her eyes. "If you kept her awake for a hundred hours, you would."

Gibbs didn't respond. 

"Two hundred hours and you would not catch any intelligence."

Silence. There were voices outside the room, briefly, and then only the whispers of the building, the humming of the lights.

"Four of the youngest we sometimes kept in one cell," she said. She spoke quickly now - no desire to dwell here. "The more terrified they were the more they fought, and they fed off one another. We used that, of course. One afternoon they were unruly and a punishment of exercise for their block was imposed. I oversaw it."

She was quiet again, breathing carefully controlled. It stretched on too long.

"Heat stroke?" He'd drilled men in summer heat. Knew how suddenly it could kill.

She finally looked him in the eye, with what seemed to be Herculean effort. Like she thought not doing so would be cowardly. "Yes. Organ failure, exacerbated by fatigue. Sleep deprivation. And water in their lungs."

He'd known it was coming. Still he looked away at that. "All four?"

"Two were dead when we entered the cell in the morning. One was in a coma. He died several days later. The fourth – he opened his veins with a rock," she said robotically, "when he saw the others were gone. He was conscious when we found him."

"He survive?"

"No."

Gibbs lifted a hand, rubbing at the prickly skin around his mouth. She watched him without interest, or emotion. Knowingly.

Well, there was no sugarcoating this. It would be idiotic to try, even if he wanted to. "Sickening."

Her eyes flickered. "Yes."

"And swept under the rug." He'd certainly never heard of it, and the death of four boys in custody was news. Or should have been.

"Yes. The team was dismantled. There were five of us," she said. "Our supervisor was retired within a week. She does well now in the private sector. She . . ." Ziva cleared her throat, pressed shaking hands once more into the table.

He looked at them and frowned. There was more? Worse?

"Gibbs." Her voice was faint again. "I think she may have worked in South America. I have been trying - since we returned from Colombia I have been trying to trace her movements."

It took a moment. "Gray said something when he was hallucinating?"

"Possibly. A nickname that she went by. It is a common - I don't know if it is the same woman. I don't know," she ran her hands through her hair as if she wanted to pull it out. "I don't know that it matters. I can't find her. But it could have been her."

Well, that actually managed to be worse. She was still out there. 'Working.'

"What's the name?"

"Ori, in Israel. He called her Orá," she said lowly. "Oráculo. In English-speaking intelligence circles, she was known as the Oracle."

"And the rest?"

"The others were reassigned to less desirable positions within the intelligence command. I should have been tried and imprisoned but was given the opportunity to start over, in a unit more . . ." She paused to stare at him, and finally, hollowly, laughed. "Suited to my abilities. I became Kidon."

Gibbs let that go. It didn't matter. "Hell of a probie assignment."

She didn't miss a beat. "I had all the authority I needed to save them, if I had chosen to exercise it."

"Did you neglect the duties assigned to you?" He was genuinely curious about that. About what she thought. He had a pretty good idea of what actually happened.

"No. Only my duty as a human being."

Gibbs nodded, rested his chin in his hand. "Dinozzo said Kort accused you of 'following the letter of the law.'"

"Yes." Ziva's lips curled into a faint, cold sort of smile. "I used to be very conscientious about following orders."

And that sure as hell wasn't the case when she came to him five years ago. "Until . . . ?"

"Until I inadvertently murdered four children in my care."

"So you were following orders when you didn't check on them?"

Nothing.

"Your specific orders led to their deaths?"

"It does not absolve me of my responsibility, but that is one excuse among many, yes." Ziva's gaze wandered over to the window, as if she had better places to be. She carried on absently. "It is also the justification that carries the most weight for those with a military background . . . except for mothers. Parents, I mean . . ."

He sat there silently, letting her attention drift until her gaze came back to him, and the echo of that last, throwaway caveat hung in the air between them.

She stared at him and he stared back. He wasn't about to force it into the open. She could take it up if she wanted to.

"You know," she said wonderingly.

He let his head tilt in acknowledgement.

"Huh," she finally said. "Just though observation, I take it. Of me?"

"Yes."

"Do the others . . .?"

"I doubt it. They wouldn't know what to look for."

She nodded. "I was undercover," she said hesitantly. "By the time the mission was over, it was too late . . . "

"Occupational hazard," he said softly.

She blinked. "Oh. Yes, the Yoon Dawson case. That was – I was still new to the team then. You have known for so long?"

He shrugged. "Never knew, just wondered. Some things you said . . . " he trailed off. "Having a kid changes you."

"Yes, although - " She frowned, curled her hands together once again, stilled them. "I did not expect it to."

He smiled a little. "I'm not sure anyone does."

But she shook her head. "No, I was never going to - to keep it. The father – " She broke off to gather herself. "I could not raise her." She let her eyes graze over his face, and he nodded. "Though I suppose I would have wanted to, if it had been . . . if I could have . . . " She sucked in a breath and let it out carefully. "I never held her," she said, voice as steady now as her thoughts were scattered. "They say it is better not to, so that there is no attachment."

He couldn't imagine how that was possible. Not when the baby was wanted. From the look on her face Ziva couldn't either.

"You think about her?"

She nodded. "She would be seven. Is seven. After she was born, the boys - " Her hands curled into claws. "Somehow it became even more monstrous."

They sat, silent under the weight of mistakes that would never truly leave them.

"We spend our lives protecting strangers and I can only wonder if she is safe. If she is happy. She could be dead, or need help. I would not know."

He had the faint urge to point out how unlikely that was. To say that she was probably fine - something reassuring, however useless. But he kept silent. Gibbs didn't do useless.

"It was a relief to come for you," she said. "Like redemption, if that is possible." She turned her face toward the window again. "I have never been fortunate enough to protect my own family," she said slowly. "My parents never needed me. My siblings are dead, my brother at my own hand. My child . . . not even the children of other mothers, those boys in my care. But we were able to come for you. Tony and I." She smiled, small and tough. Like she was hiding something precious, something vulnerable from the world. "I have that."

**x**

Gibbs said she was a good person, in so many words, despite the fact that she'd been raised by wolves.

He said he would kick her ass if she resigned over an inept supervisor, one she'd had when she was all of nineteen. But he would let her go home for the evening if she wanted to.

She didn't want to. 

Gibbs knew, and he did not despise her. She wanted to weep.

But Ziva didn't do that either. She went with Tony into the DC night and hauled little "LC" into the Navy Yard.

They didn't even need to mention that a witness had come forward. The boy was patently terrified. Gibbs figured anyone that nervous would've tossed the weapon, so he had his agents fake finding the gun and lifting prints from it.

He had his mother and a hotshot lawyer sitting next to him, but the kid cracked in three hours anyway. Within four he'd made a deal to trade information on his uncle. 

Tony explained who Beyonce was to Gibbs. 

And that was how they got AK.

**x**

When Gibbs got back to his desk from interrogation it was well after midnight. McGee was waiting for him.

"Got the warrant, Boss."

Gibbs watched Tony and Ziva slide behind their desks and open the drawers to pull out their gear. "Warrant for who?"

McGee frowned, comically puzzled. "Well . . for AK?"

"What for, McGee? We're not going to arrest him."

Tony straightened up. "We're – what? We're not?"

"Nope," Gibbs sat down. "Ziva, McGee. Go stake out his house. I want to know when he's there without any of his dirtbag business associates around."

 "Uh . . . " McGee glanced to the rest of the team for support.

Now all of his agents were comically puzzled. Gibbs grinned a little, which only added fear to the mix.

"If we're not going to arrest him, what are we going to do to him?"

Gibbs picked up a piece of paper sitting on his desk and held it out a bit, trying to read what kind of form he was looking at, to no avail. He reached for his glasses. "Well, McGee, we're going to do what Dinozzo thinks I do best."

"Ah, that's easy," Tony smiled widely. "You're going to – " And then he broke off, eyes widening. "You're going to . . .?"

Today had been a good day, and Gibbs was in a good mood. He hid his grin by looking down at his paperwork, waiting for whatever Dinozzo would come up with as a substitute for _You're going to shoot him_.

" . . . You're going to . . . haul AK into interrogation and . . . give him the old steely-eyed stare? . . . To death?"

"No," Gibbs said mildly. "I'm going to recruit him. Whether or not that will be the death of Uncle AK is hard to say." He looked up to see all of them standing there, staring at him. Gibbs glared from Ziva to McGee. "What are you two still doing here?"

They scrambled for the elevator in an entirely satisfying way.

Tony and Gibbs worked with Abby on matching up months of surveillance with the insider information LC had given them. It wasn't difficult to begin connecting dots. AK had truly begun grooming his nephew to be his right-hand man. It was how the kid got his hands on a gun in the first place.

Less than two hours later Gibbs got the call from Ziva. It was 0215 and AK was at home with only his family for company. Gibbs called him up and, when there was no answer, had his agents pound on the door until it opened. McGee handed his phone to the man and Gibbs invited him down to NCIS, offering a number of compelling reasons to visit. McGee and Ziva trailed him in.

AK sat blinking across from Gibbs in interrogation, sleepy and confused as hell, a little worried for his nephew and a lot terrified for himself. AK was not a titan of ambition, like Londono, or an insane, power-drunk dictator, like Paloma. He wasn't anywhere near as smart. AK was midlevel. Cunning, like most dirty businessmen, cold-blooded and selfish, like most dealers. But that was all. A simple, greedy mouth, always looking for the best deal, grabbing for the shiny trinket, always hustling for a little more.

And right then, NCIS had a lot to offer. His favorite nephew's future. His beloved sister's happiness. All that on top of AK's business, his freedom, maybe his life. They had his whole world in their hands.

They made the deal before dawn. LC would be tried as a juvenile, and not for murder. Gibbs agreed with Cassie's assessment there. The kid was a punk, under the control of his uncle, showing off for his friends. His stupidity had gotten a boy killed, but it _was_ an accident. Manslaughter. LC would certainly spend the next several years in detention, but Gibbs was probably doing him a favor. If he'd stayed under his uncle's influence an idiot of that calibre could well have earned himself a thirty-year sentence before he even left his teens.

Whatever leniency Uncle AK got would depend on the quality of the information he brought back to Gibbs, but no guarantees. NCIS had already been generous.

Six hours after he first entered the Navy Yard, AK left it as an informant. He carried with him a brand new ambition – to work his way up the ranks of the Calera cartel.

**x**

The team was exhausted. Tony took Ziva out for breakfast anyway. He had the waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, she had the omelet with cheese and tomatoes.

He explained how everything you need to know about informants you can learn from 'Goodfellas,' and she explained that Mossad didn't often deal with informants, and he said that was because the Israeli ninja crew was too scary to make deals with anyone, and they both laughed. When he dropped her back at her place he walked her to the door, and gave her a hug before he could stop himself.

She hugged him back, finally, and it kind of went on a long time. He wasn't sure, but it was very possible that she cried into his shirt. When he asked, Ziva told him she was fine. And for the first time in months he believed her.

* * *

 

a/n: For anyone curious, the Yoon Dawson case and its examination of the occupational hazards of covert agents can be found in Season 3, Episode 14, "Light Sleeper."


	10. House Call

"Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs!"

"He's not here, Abs."

Tony was so deep into Petty Officer Joseph Reynold's bank statements he didn't even look up.

Bank statements aren't very interesting, as a rule. Unless, of course, something totally hinky is going on in them. Officer Reynolds' statements were extremely interesting, which meant he had a lot of explaining to do. Like how he expected to get away with smuggling heroin when his bank accounts were so obviously those of a heroin smuggler.

But then Abby chuckled, and in a really satisfied way, so Tony did look up.

"I've got something so secret even Gibbs doesn't know I've got something," she grinned.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "On Reynolds?" If Abby was impressed by a secret it would have to be good - like, international spy ring good. Tony wouldn't have thought little Joey Reynolds had it in him.

"Nope," Abby grinned again, and skipped off.

When Gibbs got back from the witness interview Tony trailed the boss down to the lab.

Abby didn't even turn around when they walked in. "South Africa, Gibbs!"

Gibbs walked up to look over her shoulder, at the computer screen she was staring at. "Yeah? What's in South Africa?"

"Kort," she said smugly.

Knowing where Kort was, they had discovered, was damn impressive all by itself. The man was either a phantom or the most paranoid agent Gibbs had come across, and that was saying something. But Kort had actually told Gibbs he was in South Africa pretty recently, so it wasn't all that impressive.

Gibbs did the eyebrow raise, like she knew he would.

"And I know why." Abby gave him her thousand watt smile. El Jefe did the _spill it_ gesture.

"He's doing the same thing in South Africa that he was doing in Colombia ten years ago, before he'd ever heard of La Grenouille," she said leadingly.

Gibbs did the gesture again, but less patiently this time. Not that it had been all that patient before.

"Arms dealing, Gibbs! Well, I mean, going undercover against arms dealers, not actually dealing them himself."

"He's undercover in South Africa?"

"Yep. See, you said that the Calera patrols were carrying American rifles. And the easiest way to get black market M4s right now is through the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bad guys there sell them to bad guys in Africa, and bad guys in Africa - " Abby dramatically hit a few keys, and a pixelated snapshot of a man came up. " - sell them to bad guys all over the world, including the Calera cartel. Meet Declan O'Donnell," she said proudly. "Roberto Londono's gunrunner. Among other things."

Tony leaned in, staring at the pale blob on the screen.

This was actually huge. They didn't even have a verified recent photo of Londono yet, much less his lieutenants, and they had no positive names at the top of the organization, no idea who he had doing his army's worth of dirty work.

Until now.

"South African?" Gibbs squinted at the screen. O'Donnell was a white guy, tall and thin, dark hair and pasty skin. In the photo he was standing in front of a rundown store front. He looked - well, pasty -

"Nope. Irish. In the eighties he comes up with a string of arrests in Belfast. Disorderly conduct, B&E, destruction of property, posession. Assault, aggravated assault, sexual assault - lots of assault, basically, increasingly nasty stuff. And that's just his juvie record. Then he disappears from the scene for awhile, until 1992, when he was arrested again and questioned under suspicion of buying guns for the IRA. According to British Intelligence he rose through the ranks pretty quickly and was sent to Colombia with two other IRA weapons experts, probably to buy guns and train with Colombian guerillas. When peace broke out between the UK and Ireland in the mid-nineties the arms business back home dried up, so he stayed in Colombia and met . . . "

"Londono?" Tony said.

"Exactamente," Abby nodded. "We know that Roberto Londono had just taken over what remained of his dead brothers' cartel. We don't have any information on Londono directly, but we do know that he must have been recruiting right around the time O'Donnell was offering his services for hire. British Intelligence kept tabs on O'Donnell's movements, so we also know that he spent a lot of the next decade moving in and out of Londono's region, and he eventually began spending more and more time in South Africa. Probably buying more and more guns for the cartel."

Gibbs frowned at the profile on the screen. "How'd you find him, Abs?"

"The old stuff came from Ziva's contacts in British Intelligence. The new stuff - well, I think it's because he's finally stopped working exclusively for the Colombian control freak. For the past year he's spent more time in Cape Town than Colombia and started doing odd jobs for weapons dealers based there - finding other buyers in South America and also some in the States. That brought him to the attention of the CIA, which is where I found most of this," she gestured at the screen. "He's not as good at covering his tracks when he's not working directly with Londono. Kort must be aware that one of Londono's men set up shop in Cape Town, since the guy's on CIA radar and we already know Kort's in South Africa . . . " she glanced at Gibbs.

He nodded. Too many coincidences. He'd put money on Kort tracking O'Donnell, too.

"So you've been tracking Kort, tracking O'Donnell?" Tony asked.

"No," Abby said emphatically. "Tracking Kort is not possible. I told you before, he's a ghost man. Now that I know he exists, O'Donnell's a whole hell of a lot easier to find."

They'd dug into Kort and hit a dead-end after he graduated from college in the UK. Once he'd joined the CIA, or whoever it was who first taught him to disappear, the trail went absolutely cold. At least they knew now why the whole disappearing thing was so effortless for Gray.

"Forget about Kort," Gibbs said. "Focus on O'Donnell, see if you can find anything else on him." He stared at the screen for a few more seconds. "And look into what happened to the other two IRA guys."

Tony glanced over at that. "You think they might have gone in with Londono together?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Don't know."

When he looked up from the screen Abby and Tony were looking at him with the "But?" faces.

Gibbs shook his head. Give them an inch and they . . . well, on Gibbs' team they were at least quietly hopeful for another inch. "But," he said pointedly, "we know Gray's mother looks like Ziva." Dark hair, dark eyes. Hispanic. Colombian, probably, from the Calera region. Which meant his father -

Abby's eyebrows shot up. Gray's eyes were _gray_. Recessive. "Which means his father is probably a pasty white guy with pale eyes, blue or gray," she said. At the very least he carried some pale genes. And those would be in short supply on Calera land.

She looked back at the screen. Into O'Donnell's crystalline blue gaze.

"You think . . . ?"

Gibbs leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Good job," he murmured, cutting her off. "Call me when you've got something on the new guy."

"Si, el jefe," Abby recovered, and called after him in sing-song, "Forget about CIA Caspar, the not-very-friendly British ghost. Dig up dirt on the Irish El Diablo. I'm on it!"

Tony had to get back to Petty Officer Reynolds' bank statements before Gibbs came calling for an assessment, so he was on the boss's heels as Gibbs swept out of the lab.

Dinozzo only narrowly avoiding smashing into him. Gibbs was in the doorway when he stopped dead in his tracks. "What did you say?"

Abby quirked an eyebrow in his direction, her attention already back at her computer. "I'm on it?"

"No." Gibbs stepped back into the lab. "You said 'El Diablo.'"

**x**

Over the next few weeks, delicate inquiries were made into former IRA operatives last spotted in South America and a shadowy figure known in some circles as El Diablo. A month passed in routine. The team checked in with AK and worked a load of MCRT cases.

Ziva got the call at 0130. It was an unfamiliar number, but they were on call that night. Most likely Gibbs had destroyed yet another cell phone and was borrowing some stranger's. She picked up and made a half-ditch attempt to clear the sleep from her voice. "David."

"Agent David, this is Cassandra Gray. I need to reach Agent Gibbs."

Ziva sat up, blinking in the dark. "Cassie? Is something wrong?"

"Yes. Gibbs once said he has access to a doctor? But we do not know how to reach him."

"You are injured?"

A pause, and some weird shuffling on the line. "Not me," Cassie said.

"I can call the doctor," Ziva spoke quickly. "Where are you?"

"His house. But there is no answer."

Ziva took a moment to figure that out. She paused when it did come to her, right in the middle of pulling on a pair of pants one-handed. "You are at Gibbs' house?"

"Yes."

"What is the injury, Cassie?"

Another hesitation, and a murmured conversation. "We do not want an ambulance."

"Okay." Ziva shoved her feet into the nearest pair of shoes. "Only the doctor."

"He has been shot in the leg. But it does not appear to be serious."

Ziva stood still for a moment. "Can I call you back at this number, Cassie?"

"Yes."

Ziva hung up, snaked into a bra and shirt, and dialed Gibbs, snatching up her keys with her free hand. He answered immediately, voice rough with sleep.

"Gibbs. Cassandra Gray is at your house with someone who is injured. They want a doctor but not an ambulance. I am calling Ducky." She hung up.

Gibbs frowned and shoved his cell back into his pocket, mentally playing back his agent's words at a speed that could be deciphered. Then he picked up the pistol sitting on the bench next to him and jumped up the stairs, technicolor images of a bloody Amelia exploding in his mind's eye. She was supposed to be leaving for California this weekend -

When he edged aside the living room curtain he spotted two dark figures sitting on his porch, breath puffing white in the frigid January air. A wash of relief hit. They were both too big to be Amelia. He opened the door, gun raised, and swept the area beyond the porch for threats. An SUV parked in his driveway started its engine and pulled out, driving away as Gibbs watched.

He frowned and nodded at the car, tucking the gun into the small of his back. "That your ride?"

"Yeah." Gray was sitting on the floor, Cassie kneeling next to him, hands clamped over one leg. "You didn't answer the door."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows. "Door's open."

Gray looked up at him, uncomprehending, then let it go. "About that doctor?" The kid waved a hand down at his leg. There was a dark, tight tie of some kind wrapped around his upper thigh, stemming the flow of blood that had stained his jeans dark down to the ankle.

"On his way." Gibbs stepped closer, eyed the leg, noting absently that Gray wasn't wearing a coat, just a heavy sweatshirt, even though the forecast was for sno – wait. "Have you been shot?"

"Yeah."

Gibbs stood frozen, staring at Gray's expressionless face as warm air flowed over his shoulders, out of his house. The only thought really penetrating was that the kid attracted more disaster than Dinozzo.

"Hold on a minute." Gibbs retreated back into his living room and spread a blanket out on the floor, throwing a pillow at one end. Duck would want easy access, which ruled out the narrow couch. 

When he went back to the doorway Cassie was closing a blood smeared phone, the other hand still clamped over Gray's wound. "Ziva says the doctor will be here in fifteen minutes."

"Let's get you inside."

Gibbs cautiously slipped an arm under Gray's shoulder and pulled him upright. Cassie took the other side and together they eased him into the house and set him down on the blanket, head toward the fireplace and his feet toward the door, a couch cushion folded under the leg to prop it up.

In the bright light the blood on his jeans looked dark and dull, at least, not fresh. There was another tight band wrapped around the wound itself. Gibbs checked the tourniquet curiously. It was good. "Did you apply this?"

Cassie nodded, yanking her coat off.

"When?"

She pulled a sleeve back to look at her watch. "Forty minutes."

Gibbs nodded. Duck would want to know.

She resumed her place at Gray's side, hands coming down to cover the wound again. Gibbs noted she was pushing down with most of her weight, keeping pressure on it. Doing everything right.

Weird silence enveloped the three of them. Cassie's eyes travelled methodically around the room, cataloguing everything in it.

No ambulance, Ziva said. There was nothing else to do now but wait for Ducky.

Gray leaned back on his hands and tipped his head up, staring at Gibbs' ceiling. The blood loss was significant, but he didn't look like he was about to pass out. He didn't even look stressed. He was just . . . blank. Breathing a little heavy though, and his skin was pale, face covered in a sheen of sweat.

A little crawling feeling pricked the back of Gibbs' neck. This routine – well, it looked like it was routine. They'd done it all before.

"So," Gibbs stared down at them, arms across his chest. "No hospital?"

"Can't," Gray said, addressing the ceiling. "Kort's not around to fix it."

Gibbs thought that over, trying to find a loophole he could drive an ambulance through. McGee and Abby were good at hacking, together he knew they were among the best. But they didn't have the resources of the CIA behind them, and fixing a hospital visit would be complicated. It wouldn't just be medical records. There would be the cops that a gunshot would pull in, and Gray's age would bring out child welfare and a social worker. After that, who knew? What would Child Welfare make of this kid's life after doctors had performed a thorough exam? Would Kort even be able to throw them off the scent at that point? All the computer wizardry in the world couldn't tackle a web that big, that _human_.

Gibbs rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and stared at the floor, turning it over in his mind, looking for another way.

"It's not worth it." Gray was looking at Gibbs now. "Going to an ER. Pulling your people in. Be a mess to cover up."

The phrases were short and Gibbs knew why. The words were broken up by the effort it took to breathe through pain. The tone was steady, the look calm, but none of that meant a damn.

It'd been one thing in the jungle, when the kid was hurt there. Trotting off to the hospital wasn't an option then. But now it was. And for a father, or a cop – well, for Gibbs – that meant Gray got a trip to the hospital, not triage in the living room. Thorough, extensive medical care, with lots of tests, just to make sure, and specialists in case things went wrong, and all the endless resources of American wealth. Because it was there.

Instead, a kid was sitting on a blanket in his living room, bleeding into his friend's hands. Gibbs could feel his gut turning to stone, the usual reaction when he came across something that felt wrong to this degree. When Kelly was sick – damn, when she'd broken her arm –

Gray sat up a little straighter, eyes fixed on Gibbs. "If this in't gonna work," a quick breath, "we can head out. Get fixed some– "

"Shut up," Gibbs sighed. Gray would bolt at the first hint of a trip to the ER, hole in his leg or not. "And lay back. It'll lessen blood flow to the wound."

Gray studied him until he seemed satisfied that Gibbs wasn't going to freak out to the tune of a 911 call. Then he reached behind him and pulled out the pistol tucked into the back of his pants, placing it next to him before he lowered the rest of his body to the floor.

Gibbs rubbed his face with his hands and managed to talk himself into accepting the situation. The first step to acceptance was the decision to have McGee and Abby try tracking Kort down tomorrow morning, just so Gibbs could ream him out. But before that they would fix the current situation.

"Do you want me to cut the leg off your pants?" Gibbs asked. "Or you want to lose the pants altogether?"

"Easier . . . take them off," Gray muttered.

Gibbs nodded. Ducky would want to examine the entire leg anyway, with a wound that high. He knelt down and started on the laces of a boot, the one covering the foot that wasn't attached to a leg with a bullet in it. When he switched to the injured leg he held the foot as still as possible while he pulled out the laces and slipped off the shoe.

Gray unsnapped the button of his jeans one-handed and pulled down the fly.

Gibbs hesitated. Gray wasn't on death's door, obviously, but taking off his pants - even cutting them off - would involve some jostling. "You taken anything for pain?"

"No."

"We'll wait for the doc," Gibbs decided. "It'll be – "

Gibbs turned suddenly toward the window, holding up a hand to quiet the kid's response. There was something moving out there. He picked up his gun and put a knee on the couch, pushing the curtain aside a hair to peer out.

**x**

Ziva beat Ducky by ten minutes. She parked around the corner and walked the perimeter, made her way into the house, weapon drawn, to find Gibbs sitting on his couch with a pistol on the coffee table in front of him. Gray was on the floor next to another gun, Cassie hovering over him.

"Have a nice walk?"

Ziva nodded without really looking at Gibbs. "Everything appears to be secure." She moved closer to the kids on the floor. "Is anyone pursuing you, Gray?"

He frowned at her, confused.

Gibbs could just imagine how that would be a complicated question. Was the Calera cartel pursuing him? The CIA? Some local gang?

Who the hell knew? Gibbs was pretty sure that the only reason every slimeball in DC wasn't busting down the door to get a crack at the kid was the sole fact that Gray . . . didn't really seem to exist. He was a ghost, and that made him damn hard to track down. God knows Gibbs' team had searched. There was no trace of him anywhere, no evidence of his existence – except, of course, for the warm, generally bleeding body that kept crossing Gibbs' path.

Why go through all the trouble to be a ghost? Or to create one, if you were Kort? Only one reason stood out. Gibbs would bet his rifle there were bad guys out there trying to bring the kid down. He sighed. Not a problem for tonight, hopefully.

"Ziva wants to know if whoever shot you is still after you," he explained from the couch. "And if they're likely to show up here."

Gray's face smoothed out. "No."

Well, that was decisive. Sounded like Gray had already 'taken care of' the problem. In Colombia that involved a body count.

Gibbs felt a tension headache descending. "Anyone else out there need a doctor? Or an ambulance?"

"No."

"Yeah? How about the morgue?"

Gray didn't answer.

Goddamn. That was a _yes_ , wasn't it? Gibbs propped an elbow on the arm of the couch, rubbed a finger across the top of his forehead. "Is that pistol a murder weapon?"

Gray looked deliberately at the gun next to him, and smiled. "Could be."

The smile never faltered in the face of Gibbs' stone-cold stare.

Cassie muttered something sharp and annoyed under her breath, speaking in her friend's ear. Gray shrugged.

She looked at Gibbs, nodded at the pistol on the floor. "That is not ours and we have not fired it. It is what was used to shoot Gray," she said curtly. "It was an accident. There were no witnesses. The shooter is dead. Gray did not kill him. Now do you think you could wait to interrogate him until after he is treated? Is that the doctor?"

The lights of Ducky's Morgan swept over the lawn and cut out in the driveway.

Gibbs stood, picking up Gray's pistol with a piece of paper - he didn't carry gloves with him in his own home - and set it on top of his gun safe before heading to the door to meet Ducky.

The doctor bustled in and set down a large black case. "Ah! Jethro. I understand the famous Gray is visiting here, while he really should be on his way to the hospital. Gunshot wounds are nothing to be trifled with, 'serious' or not."

Ducky tugged off his hat and trench coat and flung them both at Gibbs, blowing past the other man and into the living room. "And here you are." Ducky's eyes swept Gray and Cassie critically, all business. "What an honor. Just as Ziva described you. Is that the entrance wound then?" Ducky plunked himself down on his knees beside Gray, hovering on the opposite side from Cassie. "Is this your only injury?"

"Yeah."

The doctor opened the case he'd set beside him and pulled on gloves, glancing at Cassie. "And you my dear? Are you all right?"

"Yes."

Ziva stepped out of the way and Gibbs lowered himself into the armchair next to her, resting his elbows on his knees. He watched closely, gathering material for the rant that was coming to Kort.

Ducky asked to take a quick look at the wound and Cassie lifted her hands, giving the doctor room to slice into Gray's jeans and inspect the area.

"A .357, Duck," Gibbs said. Not a small round.

"Yes, I see," Ducky muttered. "Alright then. Any allergies? Except to bullets, of course."

"No."

Ducky turned to the case, pulling out a needle and syringe. He'd drawn up the fluid swiftly and was lowering it toward Gray with equal speed when the kid lurched up and held out a hand to fend him off. But Cassie got there first, reaching out snake-fast to catch the doctor's wrist.

Duck froze.

"What is that?" Cassie asked.

"A painkiller. Quite harmless."

"No," Gray said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Use local. Don't want anything . . . else." His breathing was ragged now. Control finally slipping after all this time.

Ducky frowned, his wrist still caught in Cassie's hand. "I'm not sure I understand you."

"Local anesthetic is acceptable," Cassie said slowly. "He does not want general, or opiates."

Ziva turning to catch Gibbs' gaze, stricken.

Gibbs closed his own eyes, and took a breath.


	11. Cut Once

Ducky twisted his hand out of Cassie's gently. She let him go, but kept her arm hovering over Gray's body, ready to ward off any sudden needle jabs.

"A local anesthetic would be grossly inadequate," Ducky said firmly. "Whatever you may believe, that wound is deep and serious. A general – "

"Don't want it," Gray growled.

The doctor blinked down at him for a long moment. "So far this evening, you have been shot, refused hospitalization, and now you refuse treatment. I'm not _convinced_ you are competent to make any such decision."

"He is not refusing treatment," Cassie pointed out. Her tone was steadfastly neutral, even in the face of the agitated doctor and Gray's obvious deterioration. 

Gibbs wondered what it would take to get her rattled - if it was even possible.

"But we can find care elsewhere if you will not treat him." She eyed the black case sitting next to Ducky. "The bullet is not even in the bone. I could do it up, with the right supplies."

Ducky studied the girl in front of him. "And you've determined where the projectile is, have you?"

"It is intact, here." She placed two fingers on the outer side of the leg, just above the knee - a good six inches down from the entrance wound. A slanting, downward shot, then. "It went through tissue only."

Ducky reached into the long cut he'd made in the jeans to feel the area, movements excessively gentle. Then he twisted around to look at Gibbs, no doubt to find some rational figure to plead his case. "Jethro – "

Unfortunately Gibbs couldn't see any good options on offer here. "Will using just the local stuff compromise his treatment?"

"Well – " Ducky harrumphed. "You mean beyond needless pain and suffering? Assuming he can be held down? I can't use so much that it would numb the entire area. Half a foot long, deep, and the angle - it will be a complicated wound to clean."

"You sure?" Gibbs asked Gray.

Gray nodded.

Gibbs' eyes slid back to Ducky. His doctor should know, Gibbs figured. "He's a recovered addict."

Ducky sat back on his heels for a second, studying the expressionless boy and the bloody leg in front of him.

"Alright then," Ducky said finally, uncharacteristically grim. "Though I should like to state for the record that I do not agree with this course of action." He reached back to his case and picked up yet another needle and syringe, once again moving swiftly. "I trust you have no objection to antibiotics?" he muttered testily.

"Big fans," Cassie assured him.

Ducky swiped at the crook of Gray's arm with alcohol, loaded him up with the approved drugs, and went off to scrub his hands. Gibbs disappeared into the basement and returned with one of his bright work lamps, focusing it over Gray's lower half. The tourniquet, followed by Gray's pants and the bandage over the wound itself, were gently removed, the tourniquet finally reapplied.

Cassie kept up a low, soothing patter, congratulating Gray on choosing button-up boxers that morning, speculating on how long he would be on crutches and how grumpy that was likely to make him, asking Gibbs if he could get a clean gauze pad out of Ducky's case for her. She lay the fresh pad over the exposed wound and reapplied pressure. Somewhere along the line the girl had been trained by a medic.

Ducky returned, pulling fresh gloves over clean hands, finally loading the leg up with as much local anesthetic as he dared. Then the doctor just sat back and looked at the kid. Gibbs was a little concerned at how pale Ducky was. He'd never seen anything medical phase the man.

"We just need to wait for that to kick in," Ducky murmured. "Won't be a minute or two."

"Cop," Gray said. He held a hand out to her.

Cassie nodded and turned toward Gibbs. "You'll hold his leg? The doctor will need to work over the wound."

He frowned at her for a second, before he got it. She didn't have the strength in her arms to hold him still. Gibbs slid off the chair he was in and onto the floor. Cassie left off the pressure on Gray's wound to shift up toward his head, and Gibbs placed his hands over the pad. It was hot, heat flaring up from the leg. When Ducky nodded to him, Gibbs left off the wound itself and settled one hand just above Gray's knee and the other at his hip. With his right hand Gibbs could touch the floor with thumb and forefinger. He had to wonder how the bullet could possibly have found enough tissue to bury itself in.

"Ziva," Ducky said, "if you would don a pair of gloves and hand me what I need, as I ask for it?"

"Certainly." She came to kneel by the doctor. He'd already laid out everything he would need.

Ducky bent over his task and tuned everything else out. A trick he'd learned in his blood-soaked years as a field surgeon. He inspected the entrance wound and flushed damaged tissue of debris. Scrubbed clean the path of the bullet, as much as could be reached, and trimmed the scorched, ragged edges of the wound. He sliced open a new path to remove the bullet, it was impossible to reach through the arching path carved through the flesh. The bleeding was an annoyance, but not so severe as to be dangerous. Once the projectile was out he flushed and cleaned that site as well, until the entire unnatural tract had been swept out. Finally he stitched up the clean incision.

Ducky only came back to himself as he dressed the wound, almost an hour later. The patient seemed to be alright. Rigid, sweating profusely. He breathed deeply and deliberately, a slight high pitch to it now. Ducky couldn't recall if the boy had cried out at all. He only knew he wouldn't necessarily have heard it - there had been times, before, when he heard nothing at all, even though he'd seen that they were screaming.

Jethro had a tight, wary look about him, the one always brought to the fore when those he felt responsible for were suffering. His hands were still locked tight around the leg, his brow damp with the careful effort of holding the limb down without causing any further damage. The man was looking at him closely now, hopefully.

Ducky nodded, and some of the tension dropped out of Gibbs' shoulders.

"I've done all I can," Ducky said, directing Jethro to lift the leg a bit so that he could wrap more gauze around it. Ducky's voice sounded strange in his own ears, far away, somehow, as if the air itself had become heavy in the long, tense silence they'd shared. "Now it is time to rest, my boy. I'll change the dressing and inspect for infection tomorrow, but at the moment I see no reason to expect any complications. You were extremely lucky the little bugger didn't hit an artery, or your femur, my goodness. I can only offer you Motrin for relief overnight, and then of course another round of local anesthetic tomorrow. I'm afraid any more this evening would be imprudent."

As he spoke, Gibbs sat back silently on his heels, head bowed low, ignoring the rest of them as he wiped damp palms on his jeans.

Ducky removed the tourniquet last of all and set about climbing to his feet, only to have his forearm seized in a tight grip. The movement brought him back forty years in the blink of an eye, when an endless parade of desperate boys grasped at him just like that, flailing at his arms, scrabbling at his chest.

He glared down, a little wild, but came back to himself when he saw the patient was still, now, and reassuringly calm. Gazing up at him with eyes like gray pearls.

"Thanks." The voice was gravelly now, where it wasn't before.

"You are very welcome." He patted the young man's chest with a suddenly trembling hand. Damn lucky _that_ hadn't started up until after the procedure. "It quite brought me back to my days in the Army," he said stoutly. "I could tell you some stories, but they're much too exciting for a patient in need of rest." And Ducky was going to have nightmares enough already.

The boy sat up, swiping at his sweaty face with his free hand. The hand holding onto the doctor shifted and then it was under Ducky's arm, like a support. The eyes now level with Ducky's were – well, they were bright. And not unkind. "Seriously." Woozily. "Feel good. Sure you gave me local?"

"Ah." Ducky patted the thin shoulder. The boy _had_ lost some blood. "I see delirium is setting in."

"Oh, no," Cassie piped up from behind Gray, speaking for the first time in an hour. Tired, and fond. "He is this way all the time."

The boy looked down at his neatly bandaged leg and back to Ducky. They stared at each other for a beat. And then, with a sly half-grin and a low voice, Gray spoke. He sounded . . . woozy. "If I knew what a difference coming to a pro would make I'd a insisted all along. But Cop," he jerked a thumb back toward Cassie, "give her a bleeder and a scalpel and you better get out of the – "

He never did finish what he was saying. The girl reached up mid-sentence and boxed him over the head. Gray grinned and swayed just enough for Ducky to see Cassie's face beyond, looking crossly at the back of the boy's head. When she caught sight of the doctor watching them she broke into a mischievous toothy grin, all warmth and youth, and life.

Ducky laughed. Longer and louder than the occasion called for, perhaps. But it felt good, and necessary, to push back those old veils, and all his ghosts. He climbed to his feet finally, smiling down at them both. "It has been my pleasure, I assure you. Cassandra, I shall forever be in your debt, you were an excellent assistant in all of this. And I've already heard quite a bit about you, Gray, you understand. Rather fantastic tales. It's always nice to match a face to the stories."

Behind the boy Cassie had also gained her feet. She pulled a cell phone from her pocket, dialed and spoke only a low word before closing it again, folding her arms over her chest to look down at Gray.

"Oh yeah? The legend spreading at NCIS?" Gray looked between Ducky and Ziva. Gibbs had disappeared. Likely, Ducky thought, to empty a tube of Ben-Gay over his damaged knee. Sitting as he had for an hour must have been exceedingly uncomfortable.

"Ah, well," Ziva said delicately. "Legend may be overstating it. Somewhat. But our forensic scientist – her name is Abby – she has developed something of a . . . fascination."

Ducky snorted at that bit of understatement.

Gray frowned, searching his memory. "Abby . . . is that the cool one? Hol, uh, Kort said . . . there was a cool one."

"Hm," Ducky paused in packing away the tools of his trade. "That is interesting, given Abby's feelings for Agent Kort."

"Yeah?" Gray grinned. "She hate him? He gets that a lot."

"I'm sure," Ducky said warmly. And then looked up, frowning. A car horn had sounded outside.

Gibbs reappeared instantly, he and Ziva drawing their weapons as they moved toward the door.

"That's our ride," Cassie waved them down. "Come on, gimp." She reached down to wrap an arm under Gray's shoulders, only to pause under the force of both Gibbs' and Ducky's rather extreme response.

"Your _ride_?"

"It absolutely _is not_!"

The girl froze, crouched by the boy's side. She looked surprised, and a little wary.

Gray, for his part, rolled his eyes. "What's the problem?"

Ducky huffed. "Young lady, you may leave, of course, if you wish. But you," he turned on Gray, towering over him as a man of Ducky's stature rarely towers over anyone. "You should not be moved after that procedure. I insist that you be monitored. And I'm not sure I trust you will reappear when it is required of you. That wound will be properly cared for."

Gibbs lurked in the background and glared, a silent _what he said_.

"That is not necessary," Cassie said firmly. "I'll look after him."

"Cop," Gray said. "Go."

Cassie's gaze went from him to Gibbs to Ducky and finally back to Gray.

"It'll be easier," Gray said to her. "Anyway, Shorty says he's good for me."

"Shorty's a lunatic," she said sharply. "Just like you."

"Yeah. Well, Boss says he's probly good for Shorts too."

Cassie looked at Gray intently, and back to the NCIS men standing over them. She was getting tense. Gibbs found himself taking a half-step back automatically.

Gray glanced up at them. "Give us a minute."

Ducky and Gibbs looked at him, confused, until finally Ziva came to herself. "Oh. We will just – step into the kitchen."

She walked into the kitchen, making eye contact with Gibbs and Ducky as she went, ensuring they would catch on. After a moment they followed, looking intensely disgruntled at the idea of Gray going anywhere after they had hurt for him, as she was sure they had. Ziva smiled, warmed by them. Men who cared so freely, and yet deeply too. She felt lucky to know them, to have earned that care for herself. She had seen those looks before, of course, those times she had been hurt in the line.

The two men stood frowning and silent in the middle of the kitchen, arms over their chests, and twitched.

Fortunately, to Gray a minute was really just a minute, and Cassie appeared in the kitchen entrance very quickly. "He will stay," she said.

"Of course he will!" Ducky surged back into the living room. "Jethro, the couch is still the best in the house, is it? Give me a hand with him then."

But Cassie was looking hard at Gibbs, and he stood still. "He's weak from blood loss, you know how he gets. Don't push drugs on him. And don't interrogate him."

He nodded. She turned away, walking toward the door.

"Hey," Gibbs called after her. "You can stay if you want."

But the door was already closing behind her. Ziva strode to the window and watched as Cassie trotted to an SUV sitting at the curb, climbed into the passenger seat and was driven safely away.

Gibbs helped Ducky haul Gray up. His breath stuttered as the shift in weight sent blood rushing down toward the hole in his leg, no doubt hurting like hell. Gibbs bent smoothly, pulling the kid's arm up over his shoulder and picking him up in a cradle carry, careful to keep the injured leg extended.

"Oh . . kay," Gray breathed. He was still, stiff as a board in Gibbs' arms. Ziva had already spread the sheet on the couch out over the cushions, and Gibbs lowered him to it a second later.

"My hero," Gray muttered.

"You need anything else?"

"No."

Ducky fussed over Gray. Gibbs joined Ziva at the door. "Should I stay?" she asked. "To keep watch?"

Gibbs shook his head. "Go home, get some sleep."

She cast one last look at Gray and left as Ducky pulled back from the couch and turned out the living room lights, admonishing him to rest. Gibbs watched the doctor hover silently over the still boy for a moment. This was the part where Duck would normally push some kind of narcotic if the patient was still conscious – a sleep aid at least.

Gibbs tipped his head toward the kitchen. "Give me a minute, Ducky."

The doctor patted Gray on the shoulder and retreated silently to the other room.

Gibbs walked over to stand next to Gray, looking down at him from the end of the couch. Moonlight poured in through the thin curtain, silvery eyes seeming to catch and kindle it.

The bravado was gone now, as was the kindness that Ducky won. The kid looked tired. He let Gibbs stand there in the shadows and stare, but it was only a minute or two before he caved. Blood loss really did make him talkative.

"What?"

Well. Relatively talkative.

Gibbs thought it over. _What the hell is going on?_ probably wouldn't get him anywhere. He'd try a question he might actually get a response to first. The sidewinder approach. "Why do you call her Cop?"

The kid laughed, short and breathy and not really funny at all. "Jesus. He was right."

"Who's that?"

"Kort. Said you'd like her."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

The kid shifted, propping himself up to a less vulnerable position. "Why do you think?"

Gibbs waited for a long moment, but Gray didn't budge from his silence. "I do like her," he acknowledged. A prompt without an answer, just like he'd got from Gray.

The kid considered Gibbs as if trying to read him. It was strange – Gray hadn't ever bothered to read him before tonight, as far as Gibbs could tell. "Because you and Cop are alike," Gray said.

No answers to the first question Gibbs asked. But maybe some answers to others. "Yeah? How so?"

"You're . . . noble." Kid didn't say it like it was a compliment. Gibbs heard an echo of Kort's sneer. _Such nobility_.

"Righteous," Gray went on idly. "Upstanding. Virtuous. Moral. A do-gooder . . . "

Gibbs rolled his eyes and did a little yeah-yeah wave of his hand.

" . . . All the hero crap."

"And you're not?"

"You think I'm noble, Gibbs?" Off-hand – the kid knew the answer already.

"No," Gibbs admitted.

Another patch of silence.

"So you gonna ask the questions you really want answers to?"

Oh, really? "You gonna answer em? When you won't even tell me where Cop comes from?"

Gray smiled, the look cool, and let his eyes wander the room. "Some things you don't want to know."

Something gruesome then, probably. Gibbs really hoped she hadn't actually killed a cop. Even a really bad one. In fact he hoped she'd never killed anyone at all.

"You've read my file," Gibbs shrugged. "Now you're in my house. I think you want my protection but I don't really know enough about you to look out for you."

"Safer that way."

"Safer for who?"

Gray looked at him neutrally. "What's the problem? Afraid I'll murder you in your sleep?"

Gibbs returned the look, just as bland. "I think it's more likely you'd trank me to make your escape. I have observed a few things."

The kid shrugged. "Out of tranquilizers. Think you're safe."

"Wasn't my safety I was concerned about." He paused, looking for a crack in a brick wall. "You know, I thought I'd figured it out." Gibbs shoved his hands further down into the baggy pockets of his jeans. Hoped vaguely it would help him to stuff down the frustration starting to bubble under the surface. It was a short road from frustration to anger, from anger to yelling, and hollering at this kid wasn't going to get him anywhere. "I thought you dragged me out of that camp to protect you. Maybe so you could have a cop on the inside, one who plays dirty. Maybe so you'd have someone to help you get back at whoever hurt you in that place. But protecting you – that's not it, is it?"

Gray looked amused, beneath the pain. "You think you play dirty?"

Gibbs ignored him. "That can't be it. Because you don't care what happens to you. If you did you would bring me in earlier. Before you get arrested, or beat-up. Or shot." He paused, but there was no reply. "Who're you really protecting, Gray?"

The kid's eyes on him were steady, unconcerned. Like they weren't talking about his life here. Like a bullet hadn't missed his abdomen, his genitals, by a mere breath. A few inches, a .357. He'd almost been destroyed beyond repair.

"Cop's gonna have your ass if I tell her you were interrogating me."

Dodging. Dancing away like the butterfly boxer, still not saying a thing. The kid was Ziva all over again – the old Ziva.

"This isn't an interrogation."

"Yeah? What is it?"

Gibbs sighed and lowered himself down to the coffee table, sitting facing the couch. "You know, some people, when they're having a heart-to-heart," he waved a hand between himself and the kid, "they actually use words."

"Yeah, some people," Gray said cautiously. "I was told you're the strong silent type."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. The strong silent type? Every single one of his wives had called him that. "Doesn't really sound like the kind of thing Kort would say."

The kid just cocked his head.

"Who else do we have in common?"

Gray pulled his t-shirt up again to wipe the sweat from his pale face. "Doesn't matter."

"Yeah, probably not." Gibbs put his head down and rolled his shoulders. "I've got some Tylenol with codeine in it."

"Good for you."

Gibbs nodded, unsurprised. He sat quietly for a minute, sifting through new information, the picture clearer than it'd ever been before. Gray hadn't said anything much, as usual. But the last few hours told the agent plenty. Gibbs was pretty sure he knew enough, now. If he wanted to he could break him.

"You going to sit there all night?"

Gibbs realized that Gray wouldn't be able to relax with him there. Before, in the jungle, the kid was never unarmed, and only ever slept with a gun between him and the world. But earlier tonight Gibbs had taken his only firearm, set it down on the far side of the room. A continent away. 

Gibbs leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together. Looking at them instead of Gray.

So far the distance between them had been like . . . respect. A show of trust on Gibbs' part. But the kid kept getting hurt. Gibbs felt like he was watching the wheels come off, just letting it happen. He needed to know more in order to do anything useful. But when he did ask a question he never got a straight answer. Not from Gray, and not from Kort, either. 

If he pushed, Gray might shut him down completely, permanently. But so far doing nothing seemed just as dangerous. Maybe it was time to take off the gloves.

* * *

 

_a/n: Stolen lines in this chapter from NCIS Season Six, "Dead Reckoning." A major contender for Best-Ever Kort Episode:_

_Kort: I respect that you're suspicious. Caution is an asset in our line of work. Trust is elusive at best._

_Gibbs: No it's not, not between us. It's impossible. But I honor my debts._

_Kort: Such nobility. Somewhat hollow, given your fallback position. You're not really sticking your neck out for me. Vance comes down on you, you're already thinking you've got the goods on him. Words are cheap. Actions speak louder. Or to put it in parlance you'd understand - measure twice, cut once._


	12. Heroes

Gibbs raised his eyes, met Gray's with resolve. Gray had run from almost every question Gibbs had ever asked. But the boy was injured now, weak. Couldn't walk, much less run away. Gibbs could push until he got what he wanted. 

"You and Cassie. You two know each other from Colombia." It should have been a question, but Gibbs didn't ask it like one.

Gray smiled faintly, no humor in it. Gibbs could see that he understood. Gray was boxed-in, and Gibbs had run out of patience, and the kid knew it.

"You brought Cass up here with you, just like you brought Mateo. And the addict from the round up, I bet he got into dope the same way you did." Gibbs paused to study Gray's face. "Your - what, sergeants? commanders? - they hooked you on it."

No smile, now.

Gibbs leaned in. "They make you beg for it? Made you kill for it, didn't they?"

The boy across from him was expressionless, the eyes on Gibbs like smoky mirrors.

"How many more of you are there, Gray?"

The gaze flickered, and Gibbs knew he was right.

That's what this was about, for Gray at least, what it was about from the beginning. There were _more_.

"So this your famous gut?" Gray was calm, light. Like talking to Gibbs was a wrestling match, now that he couldn't run, and he refused to be pinned. "You guess, I give it away when you get one?"

To hell with it. Gibbs let his gaze go hard, his words slow, every one shaped like a blow. "Well I hope to God you're better at protecting them than you are yourself." Gibbs knew instantly that he'd nailed him.

"Sorry," Gray said finally. "No such luck."

Gibbs returned the empty stare, feeling his stomach twist. "Ask me for help."

"What do you think I'm doing here?"

" _This_ isn't help." He took a breath, reined it in. "This is clean up. Let me help you."

A sharp silence. Calm disintegrating, somewhere down deep, shell of lightness crumbling. And then -

"You think you can do better, with your little crusade?" Gray turned to face the window, restless, caged. "You can't help me. You're having too much fun fighting them, playing your war. They'll come after anyone close to you, but you already know that, right? It'll be the same as when they came for your wife and for your _kid_ , and for Macy and Bell and everybody else," he taunted. "Does it matter who gets killed along the way? Who gets left behind, long as you keep playing? Was it even her idea to testify? You make your own family into heroes?" Gray waited for his answers and then he laughed, bitter. He stared intently at Gibbs, throwing the blows back with all the force he could find. "You can't help me. You can't fucking help your own."

Gibbs waited out the silence. He'd pushed, pressed all the buttons, and he'd got his reward. Gray was talking. 

The FBI agents who manhandled him hadn't known what the boy really feared, but Gibbs had a pretty good idea. Now that he saw it, couldn't be more obvious, really - it was knowledge. Knowledge of Cassie, his friends, what had happened to him in Colombia. Insight into his life, into who he was. The kind of knowledge that Gibbs had finally got, and had just thrown into his face.

"The Caleras are a bigger crew," Gray said, "better organized. They'll destroy everyone you ever met. They all get to die brave for you, yeah?" Another pause, and another hard smile, sent out to the street. To the world. "That's fine. Get yourselves killed fighting them, if you want. But I don't believe in any of that shit, Gibbs. I don't want to be brave. And I think it's safer not to know you."

Gibbs pushed down the old flare of anger, shoved the past away effortlessly. He had played this game with far more furious prey than Gray. He'd played it with himself, for one. "I'll back off the cartel, if you prefer protection," he said flatly. "For you or for the others. We'll drop it."

The kid looked at him, something like surprise in it. Gibbs held his breath.

"Someone has to get them," Gray said, so low he might have been talking to himself, low like he was confessing a sin, shame smothering his voice, and Gibbs had to lean in closer just to hear it, had to stifle his own surprise. Gray sounded _sorry_. And then from all those months ago, when they'd sat in the heat at that base, and Gibbs had talked about violence, about what fighting was worth, and what it wasn't. Gray said, " Someone has to try. And - law should be there, more than . . . people like me. Like you said."

People like me. Did he mean kids, Gibbs wondered, like Cassie? Or civilians, like the workers from the fire? Or did he mean the cartel fighters, like he must have been one of? Gibbs nodded regardless, relieved, and not bothering to hide it. It wouldn't have been in his nature to sit back and let the threat go. He'd have done it, if the price would have been screwing up protection for Gray and his crew. He just wouldn't have liked it.

Trouble was, the kid was convinced Gibbs would sacrifice him to get to the cartel - was convinced they weren't really on the same side. On Gray's side. Gibbs didn't know if he could ever change his mind. But the odds felt better here than they ever had before.

He leaned forward, reaching hard for the right words. "Good. But we can take on the cartel and help you too, you know. I understand you're cautious . . . " Where were his parents? His family? Where was _Kort_? The people who should have protected Gray had betrayed him, somewhere along the way. For money, power, fear for their own lives. Hell, maybe for ideals. "But I'm a cop. It's my job to protect you. And I will never put anything above the people I'm sworn to protect. Not my life. Not the lives of my team, either," he acknowledged. "Definitely not some cartel bust. I won't betray you, Gray."

Gibbs waited for that to settle. And then he moved on.

"Whatever you're doing, out in the Seventh or wherever you were tonight, it's going to get you killed. Or at least exposed." Same difference, probably. "And I can't allow that."

The kid still wouldn't look at him. Kept studying the shadowed sliver of street through the part in the curtains. "No, it's not," he said finally. "That's over."

Gibbs frowned, and pushed. "The one who died – you were out there for him?"

So Gray hadn't been fighting with whoever was killed tonight. He'd been trying to protect them. And he had failed. But that meant . . .

Gibbs' voice carried the disbelief he didn't bother to hide. "And you're not going after whoever did it?"

No response. But Gibbs was done with that. "I can track down the cell phone Cassie used from this location, Gray. Trace its earlier calls. Find the scene. Find the car that brought you here and track your movements. Did you even have time to dump the body? I can reconstruct what happened. I'll end up knowing more about what went down tonight than you do. Is that what you want me to do?"

Gibbs sure as hell didn't want to go over the kid's head. Didn't want to make an enemy or a fugitive out of him. But he didn't make empty threats, either - he would do it if that was the only way of finding out what was happening, of keeping Gray safe. He would do it even if it destroyed any hope of trust between them.

Gibbs studied Gray's face. It was a mask, displaying nothing at all. No anger. Not even annoyance, or calculation. Gibbs frowned. It felt wrong. Too blank, even for Gray. There was something wrong here -

"There's no one to go after," the kid said.

_It was an accident . . ._

_Gray didn't kill him . . ._

_There's no one to go after. There's no one . . ._

Oh. Hell. He'd killed himself.

"Overdose?"

Gray didn't even twitch.

"I checked in at Phoenix House awhile back," Gibbs said slowly. "They told me the boy we called Alan McGee left after a week. Said he was pretty sick when he walked out. Was that him tonight?"

Silence.

"He a friend?"

Nothing.

But Gibbs knew he was. He pushed yet again, and thanked whoever it was up there that he'd been born a bastard. "He a friend, Gray."

He waited, and got a millimeter of a nod.

"So you got him out of Colombia, but he didn't recover from the dope," Gibbs said slowly. "And you couldn't just let him go. He knew too much, didn't he? Knew all about you. Maybe about the others, too."

Silence then, that Gibbs couldn't read. "Dangerous for a drug addict to know those kinds of secrets," he probed.

Gray tilted his head, considering, and laughed softly. "Addicts are dangerous. You work that one out on your own?"

The sarcasm was just a little quick, the words a hair too fast. Beyond anger, it was the only rough patch so far in that rock-hard shell. A hint of upset, maybe. Or nerves.

Gray had plenty of motive to simply kill off an addict who knew his past. But Gibbs didn't think he had. For one thing he doubted the kid would've been hurt if his intent was to kill. But protecting someone – that was far more likely to get you into trouble.

"He shot you accidently," Gibbs reasoned, watching what he could see of Gray's face. "Because he was high. Maybe you were arguing about the fact that he was high. Wrestling for the drugs, or the gun. And when you were hurt he got upset, and overdosed."

Gibbs frowned. Or . . . "Or he shot himself."

The look on Gray's face - an emotion, finally. It was grief.

Gibbs sighed. This was what his gut had noticed. There'd been something off from the beginning tonight, something other than the physical pain. Something wrong. It was this.

It felt absurd to even ask. But. "You want to talk about it?"

The kid didn't move. Gaze on the window still, miles away. Gibbs had absolutely leveled him.

"What about the body, Gray?"

A long silence.

"Gray."

"I took care of him."

"Okay."

How the hell that was possible after Gray had been shot, Gibbs didn't know. But he didn't feel like he really needed to know - the kid had never flat-out lied to him. If Gray said the body wasn't a problem, Gibbs believed him.

He rubbed his forehead and got to his feet. Pushing Gray into revealing what he had here tonight was necessary, he was sure of that. The situation was too volatile for Gibbs to continue operating in the dark. But just because he'd had his reasons didn't mean it felt good.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Gibbs said. He stood there for a moment, paused as he turned away. "You know, Kort said my . . . _nobility_ rang hollow - "

Gray looked at him, finally. Young, and gutted, and Gibbs sucked in a breath.

"Always does," Gray said harshly.

"No, kid," Gibbs said. "Not always." And then he finally left him alone.

**x**

Ducky was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space. Gibbs flipped open his phone and called Palmer. The kid answered with "Um."

"Get up and get over to my house, Palmer. Now. Call me when you get here."

He snapped the phone shut and got far enough into Ducky's space to jerk the doctor out of his daze.

"Come on." He tapped his shoulder to get him moving and led the older man into the basement.

Ducky followed him down only to stop at the foot of the stairs, too agitated to follow through on actually stepping into the room. "He won't sleep well," Ducky said. "In fact I will be surprised if he finds any rest at all."

That was nothing Gibbs didn't already know. He'd been shot before. Without morphine to help you along it didn't exactly induce a sleepy feeling, not unless you lost enough blood to pass out. And apparently the kid wasn't passing out.

"That isn't good for healing," Ducky muttered. He didn't say anything for awhile after that, just paced in aimless starts and stops around the far end of the basement.

Gibbs pulled down jars and a bottle of bourbon.

When Duck finally seemed to remember where he was and looked around for Gibbs, the other man was sitting on a stool, watching him, an almost empty glass of amber liquid in one hand. The full one he'd poured for Ducky rested on the bench top.

Gibbs tipped his head toward the second glass and Ducky came to sit on a stool across from him, picking up the jar nudged his way.

"He going to have permanent damage in that leg?" Gibbs asked.

"Not as far as I can tell. Perhaps some loss of feeling, but it shouldn't affect function."

So the kid would be okay. As okay as he had been before, anyway.

"You alright, Duck?"

Ducky nodded in a way that didn't seem to mean yes, really. "Do you know why I became a medical examiner?"

He hadn't. But after tonight Gibbs could guess. "No."

"One too many boys like that one," Ducky said frankly. "Suffering. Now when they come to me at least they are at peace."

Gibbs nodded. He knew the ME had been in Vietnam during the worst years of the fighting there. But that was about all he knew.

They were quiet for awhile. Ducky finally raised his hand and sipped from the glass he was holding, only to grimace. "Damn this is foul." He scowled into the squat jar. "I remember now why I stopped drinking here."

"Bring your own if you don't like it," Gibbs muttered.

"Ah, but I did. Now where did it get to?" Duck stood and poked at the shelf devoted to paint stripper and liquor. "Unless they drank it all, the little - ah ha!"

He shoved an untouched bottle of bourbon aside to draw out the dusty Scotch hiding behind it. He pushed his mug of bourbon toward Gibbs. "Drink up, Jethro. I know you didn't enjoy that any more than I did, though you're too much of a stoic to admit it."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow in protest, but went ahead and tipped the bourbon he'd poured for Ducky into his own glass. The doctor promptly replaced it with Scotch.

"I'm surprised you didn't just sneak him something Duck, if it bothered you that much. One round wouldn't make him a junkie."

 _Why didn't you_ , that meant.

He looked at Gibbs seriously. "You have seen the scarring on his arms?"

"Yeah."

Gibbs had noticed Ducky looking them over too, when he shot the kid up with antibiotics.

"Extensive. And some of it quite old, which means he was an addict when he was truly a child. That is –" Ducky huffed. "In such a case the narcotic becomes the body's default, do you see? As he grew his mind grew in tandem with its presence."

Ducky looked at Gibbs as if this had actually answered the question. Gibbs raised both eyebrows.

"Yes, well, the practical implication is an increasingly poor probability of recovery – the rate of relapse grows as the age of addiction descends, not that the rate of recovery is really very good at any age." Ducky's voice grew easier as he warmed to his scientific subject. "Much of the brain's development when we are young is permanent, you see, or at least we think it is, which makes drug use in the young particularly risky, and learning to live without it as an adult difficult to say the least. And yet there are those anomalies who recover, as Gray seems to have. Of course, there is so much we don't know about the mind."

The doctor swirled the Scotch in his glass, lost in thought, before turning to consider Gibbs seriously. "He is perhaps being overcautious, but I thought it would be a worse cruelty to taunt his body with its addiction. You saw his threshold for pain," he said lowly. "It is extreme. That is due at least in part to the brutality of detoxing. He has good reason for caution. You must never allow anyone to give him something that could trigger a relapse, Jethro. Not if the boy doesn't want it."

Ducky fixed his eyes on Gibbs, waiting for the promise. Gibbs grunted something that sounded like agreement.

They stared at the walls for a minute or two.

"Do you know if his friend was also exposed to narcotics?"

"Be surprised if she wasn't."

Ducky nodded solemnly. "Lovely girl. And bright too, isn't she? Rather well-versed in trauma care."

"I noticed."

"Cassandra." Ducky rolled her name out like a red carpet. "To shine, or to shine upon men, in the ancient Greek. Do you suppose that is her real name?"

Gibbs grinned into his bourbon. Cassie. Cass. Cop. "Probably not."

"Hm. According to myth, Cassandra was a Trojan princess to whom the gods gave the gift of prophesy. Do you know the tale?"

Gibbs shook his head.

"Cassandra foretold the fall of Troy, but no one in the city believed her. After a prolonged war, the city fell just as she predicted. To escape the invaders Cassandra sought refuge in the temple of a goddess, a sacred place. But so many years of war had stripped away all the rules of civilization from those men, as is generally the case, I suppose. A warrior - Ajax - entered the temple, raped her there, and dragged her off as his prize." Duck paused, and added, as if in afterthought, "Of course, the goddess of the temple was enraged by the transgression, and eventually killed Ajax. Impaled him on a pillar of fire."

Ducky blinked, came back to himself. "Poetic justice, hm?"

Gibbs turned his eyes to his tools and drained his second jar of bourbon. "Nice story, Duck."

Ducky watched him closely. "Is it?"

Gibbs shook his head, turning the empty jar in his hand. "I don't know anything about her."

"Except that she is exceedingly wary, as is he. And she was with him there?"

Gibbs nodded.

"And so you also know that she was caught up in a most uncivilized conflict. Women and children indeed. Well," Ducky sighed, "if she was also plied with narcotics I can only hope her recovery from addiction was staged after she received that burn. The original injury must have been quite severe."

Gibbs leaned an elbow on the workbench, shoving the jar away. He reached up abruptly to rub a hand over his face. "Yeah."

They were quiet again.

"He tried to reassure me," Ducky said musingly. "None of you mentioned his kindness. I expected to find the boy a good deal more surly, if not a total brute."

Gibbs shifted. "Never saw that kid before tonight, Duck."

"Ah, but you have only known him in hostile environments, haven't you? So he acted the tough man and you fell for it?" The doctor's surprise was clear. Gibbs didn't fall for much.

"It's not an act," Gibbs said quietly. "He's a killer."

"Perhaps." Gibbs could feel Ducky looking him over, evaluating him. "Among other things."

Gibbs thought back to that clearing, when Gray killed for them in one moment, and held a gun to Dinozzo's throat in the next. His protection as fierce and unpredictable as his violence. So far, luckily, Gibbs' team had earned protection. But Gibbs was fairly certain that's all it was - luck. Gray hadn't protected Gibbs or his people because he thought it was the right thing to do. After all - _I don't believe in that shit_. Except for saving Ziva, which Gibbs would bet had been pure impulse, everything the kid did for them was part of a bargain, a deal. Something earned, something Gibbs and his team would have to pay for. _Gray will collect._

But there had been that impulse. For Ziva, a woman he barely knew. He'd refused to endanger the Rangers from the base, too, even when he was wounded. There was Cassie, with her absolute faith in Gray. And the addict, the one the kid had tried to protect . . . that didn't look calculated. That was friendship. Family. Loyalty. It was fucking noble.

"I don't have a handle on him yet," he admitted.

"Of course," Ducky mused. "He is still becoming what he will be. No doubt the men he meets at this time will have a great influence on him."

Gibbs shook his head, eyes fixed on his empty jar. "I think he's already met his influential men," he said dryly.

"He would want you to think so," Ducky smiled. "The young are so determined to appear grown."

The doctor took on a faraway look. "You know Jethro, in one aspect at least all the wounded boys who came to me were the same in the end. I'd wager the one upstairs is no different."

Gibbs looked at him.

"They were afraid, whether they looked it or not. They wanted their mothers," Ducky said slowly. "Or their wives. To go home. But they hardly ever asked for those things." Ducky paused, and continued shrewdly, "Though I suppose you know most of what there is to know about boys in pain."

Gibbs didn't react to that. Just sat there, looking bleak. Talk did not soothe this man, Ducky knew. But there were other things that would.

"You'll get who did this to him, Jethro." Duck's voice was more command than reassurance. He'd been an officer in the RAMC, after all.

"It was an accident," Gibbs said tiredly. "The kid who shot him is already dead anyway."

"Not that," Ducky said dismissively. "The drugs."

"Working on it."

Ducky left off examining Gibbs, who looked a good deal better already. He considered his dwindling mug of Scotch, and Gibbs' own empty jar. "He's not going to be here when it comes time to change that dressing, will he."

"I doubt it."

The doctor finished his drink then, and when Palmer called, Gibbs walked him out.

**x**

Gibbs slept on the cot in the basement until something woke him up.

There was someone in his house. Not just the kid – someone he didn't know.

He was up the stairs with his gun drawn in time to level it at the head of a man standing in the front hall. The guy stilled, but he wasn't overly startled. He was big and young, late teens maybe. Short dark hair. Dark eyes. No visible weapon.

"You better not shoot my ride, Gibbs." Gray, sitting up now on the couch.

Gibbs lowered the pistol slowly, keeping his eyes on the intruder, and pointed at the door. "Wait outside."

The guy got a nod from Gray and walked out. Gibbs put the gun down on the coffee table and fell on the couch next to the kid, mindful not to jostle the leg. He reached up a hand in an effort to rub the sleep from his face and peered at his watch. It was 0630, still dark out. He'd been asleep for less than two hours. "Getting an early start?"

Gray's face was pale, slack with exhaustion. His body seemed even smaller than usual. He didn't respond.

"So this is how it's gonna be, huh? I'm just supposed to chase after you till you get yourself killed?"

"I told you it's over."

"This one, this time, yeah," Gibbs said, voice still rusty from sleep. "Expect me to believe you'll stay out of trouble from now on?"

"You think I go looking for it?"

Honestly curious. Of course the kid was digging into him too, now. Looking to read him.

"I think you could use some help," Gibbs said seriously.

"Your doctor just saved my leg. I give you some reason to think I need more than that?"

Other than nearly getting yourself killed? Gibbs turned to study Gray's profile. "No. But no one's that hard to read. If you don't have backup you feel alone. You feel alone and you find yourself in a tough spot, you get desperate. You take more risks. You end up in situations like this one." He waved a hand at the kid's stiff leg, now encased in a pair of Gibbs' sweats.

Gray's head tipped back a bit, his eyes drifting to the top of the shelves. "You just described you."

Gibbs actually laughed. "Yeah, used to be. My team doesn't really let me get away with that anymore, though." Gibbs relaxed into the couch, leaning subtly away. No threat as he pressed. "You can talk to me," he said lightly. "Even Shorty thinks I'm good for you."

Gray snorted. "You don't know who Shorty is."

"Nope. Sounds like someone who cares about you, though."

Gray was quiet. The kid had no tells, as far as Gibbs knew. No self-soothing gestures, no nervous tics. But after a few moments he seemed to somehow hold himself stiller. "Don't know what you want me to say. You know what happened."

Gibbs scratched a stubbly cheek. "I know you've lost people before. I've seen it." That fire. "Why's this one hitting you so hard?"

Gray's eyes darted his way, but that was it. There was no surprise - the mask was seamless – but surprise was what that look must have been. The fact that the kid showed nothing, that he never showed anything, was meaningless. What the kid clearly didn't understand was how the older man had known. How he'd seen the grief buried under all that blank.

Gibbs nodded once and tipped his hand. "I understand why you didn't want drugs. But you – " could've screamed, cried, _reacted_ " – took it like you wanted it," he sighed. "I saw you deal with pain when you were stabbed, I know how it should've looked." That's how I know. I know you now.

Most people, when they feel exposed, vulnerable, will hide. Hide their eyes at the very least. Gray looked right at him for a good long time, like the best defense was a good offense, even in this.

The silence stretched. And then. Well, Gray talked in his own way.

"Your team . . ." The kid's eyes left his, wandering toward the kitchen. "They don't care? About the stuff you did?"

Gibbs shook his head, not following.

"About how you offed Hernandez."

What the hell. "I don't really know," Gibbs said shortly. And he didn't care, either. Hernandez, his family - it was ancient history. Long gone.

They sat there in silence for another minute. And then Gray shifted, to get up. To leave.

"We haven't talked about Hernandez," Gibbs said slowly, and Gray stilled. So, yet another bargain. "But we've worked together for a long time," he shrugged. "They know who I am."

"What's that mean?" Gray said sharply. Confusion there. "They don't care because - it's work? And you're the boss?"

Gibbs studied him carefully. "What makes you think they don't care?"

Now the kid was incredulous. "They came for you."

"Maybe they forgave me."

Gray frowned and looked away. As if he didn't know those words, and needed time to puzzle them out.

"What's this about, Gray?"

The kid shook his head, still preoccupied. "Those scouts you killed," he said awhile later, voice low. "They didn't like it."

It was Gibbs' turn to frown.

"The guards you executed," Gray pressed, "Outside the camp. They didn't - your team, Tony and Ziva," he paused, as if searching for better words. And finding none. "They didn't like it."

Ah. Gibbs relaxed back into the couch. "They didn't. Those men were subdued and unarmed. Killing them was wrong."

The kid looked at him silently for a minute. "So why did you?"

"Instinct," Gibbs said evenly.

Kid hadn't expected that. His look turned suspicious. "If you left them alive they'd have gone back to the camp. A patrol could've tracked us."

"And if we'd taken prisoners they would have slowed us down," Gibbs agreed. "Maybe compromised the base, if we actually made it that far with them. Killing those two men probably kept us safe. Might have kept a lot of people on our side safe."

Gray nodded, like he already knew that. "So - " he frowned, tentative now. "You explained it like that? And they forgave you?"

God. "I didn't have to explain it to them," Gibbs said, almost gently. "Once they had a chance to think about it they understood why I did it, even though none of us liked it."

Gray just looked at him. Lost.

"They have a lot of training, that helps. And experience in violent situations. We have counselors on staff." Not that the team ever really made use of the ones at NCIS, as far as Gibbs knew. "They're close, so they can talk to each other if something's bothering them. Sometimes they come talk to me, or to Ducky. That helps with the tough stuff."

Gibbs hesitated. They were adults too, of course. And this right here was the reason anyone with a conscience kept children away from war. Not that pointing that out was going to help Gray. "What happened when we were captured by the larger patrol was more unusual for us. Harder for the team to deal with. We got through it by - " Gibbs paused. Well. There'd been screaming. Also hysterical rage, throwing things, an obsessive, career-altering crusade, intimidation in elevators, going to bars and getting wasted, sitting in a basement and getting wasted . . . " - talking it through with each other," he said vaguely. "When we needed to."

Gray sat absolutely still, staring at the wall, and Gibbs somehow got the sense he'd put his foot in it.

"Couldn't get there faster." The kid cleared his throat. "Thought she was okay."

Gibbs blinked. "She is. Gray, we were - "   _horrified_   " - upset that you were hurt."

"You didn't do anything." Cautious again.

"Yeah. That was the problem."

Utter confusion.

"You were there because of us. Dinozzo and David were there because of me," Gibbs reminded him. "We all felt responsible. We argued about that, but eventually we got over it. Gray . . . " Gibbs frowned. "Is someone giving you grief about what you did for us?"

Gray stared at Gibbs like he was some kind of equation.

Right. Gibbs' question time came later, apparently. "It was just a bad situation, Gray. Nobody's fault. Afterwards we had to accept that, let it go. It took some time."

"So, with the patrol - your people were mad cause they were there for you? We were there for you?"

"No," Gibbs said softly. His own disbelief coming through. They should have been angry for that, but - "They weren't mad at me at all."

Not about the patrol, anyway. The kid was too perceptive. And still staring at him. "They felt . . . " Soul-sucking shame probably wasn't the right thing to say. " . . . bad about putting you in danger. I was pissed at them for putting themselves in danger. And we were all upset that we couldn't protect you. It rattled us."

Gray nodded, as if that made sense. "Knew you'd be pissed. Kort said you probably wouldn't want to get rescued."

"What I didn't want was for you or my team to be put in danger on my account," Gibbs said. "Or for anyone innocent to get hurt."

Gray threw him a dismissive, _same difference_ look.

Gibbs sighed. "It's hard to explain," he muttered. "We don't have to do that often, luckily. Like I said, we know each other."

Gray nodded, like he understood that one too. "Yeah. Same for Diego and me," he said flatly. "He understood, so . . . never had to explain."

Gibbs had the distinct feeling he wasn't awake enough to follow this conversation. But he'd just answered a load of questions. Maybe it was bargain fulfillment time, which meant - _Why's this one hitting you so hard . . ._

"Diego's the boy who died?"

Gray watched the snow float down outside the window, white-gray flakes in a pale gray morning. "Yeah."

How much information had he bought? Gibbs watched Gray watch the snow. "He was forced to kill as well?"

A nod.

"What was he like?"

Silence, and Gibbs imagined he could hear the individual snowflakes as they ran aground.

"Like me I guess, some," Gray finally said. "We were together all the time, since we were kids. Really young," he clarified.

Gibbs waited.

"He was different though. Diego . . . " The silence went on so long Gibbs wasn't sure Gray would pick it back up. " . . . He was funny. Like, everything was funny. He laughed all the time, like nothing touched him. He was just . . . tough, when things weren't good. And then when they were, he was happy."

"What happened?"

Gray tilted his head. Down toward his arm.

"He couldn't stop?"

"He could. He quit using for awhile, when we all did. He fucking did it easier than anyone. You ever been addicted to anything?"

"No." Gibbs grinned. "Coffee."

Gray laughed. _Laughed._

"Yeah. Well, kicking heroin was . . . hard. For me. This is nothing," he waved a hand at his leg. Still squinting out at the snow. "But we did it."

"So what happened?"

Gibbs watched as Gray's breathing became oddly relaxed, only noticing it because he was sitting so close, watching so carefully. It took him a moment to realize the kid was making an extra effort to control it. Gibbs studied him, fascinated. It was like an anti-tell.

"Don't know."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "No idea?"

"I don't . . . think you - " Gray glanced at him doubtfully.

Like Ziva and Abby and McGee - Gibbs sighed. Not this again. "Try me."

"I don't know," Gray said stiffly.

Gibbs waited him out. Hoped he'd bought more.

"It's harder, I guess. Than we thought it would be. Here, I mean." The kid ground it out, like the words burned.

Gibbs frowned. "To stay clean?"

"No. Always knew that would suck."

Gibbs waited, eyes on Gray expectantly.

"It's just . . . everything . . . it's different. Cold," he said. "I forgot how cold it gets. And . . . " he tilted his head up to look at the leaden sky. "Fucking . . . gray."

Gibbs frowned.

He _forgot_?

"Where're you from, Gray?"

"Huh?"

"Where were you born."

The kid shrugged. "Brooklyn."

Gibbs closed his eyes. Opened them again. "Want to tell me what the hell you were doing in that jungle?"

"Grandma in Colombia got sick. Mom took me with her to say goodbye. We got . . . stuck."

"When was that?"

A frown. "Long time. I was six, I think."

"Your mom here now?"

Very, very still. "We got separated, down there."

"How long since you had contact?"

Gray stared at the snow.

"A long time?"

"Six years," Gray said.

She was lost, then.

"What about your dad?"

Back to the snow. "He's dead."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. Gray seemed to sense it, somehow, and turned back to him. "What?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Just wondered who he is. Thought he might be part of the cartel."

Gray stared at him. "He was. But he's dead now."

Gibbs didn't think Gray was lying. But someone else - Kort, even - could have lied to Gray. "You're sure?"

"Yeah." The kid dismissed him. "He's dead." Very sure. Gray smiled, cold and far away. "Been dead six years."

Well. Scratch El Diablo off the list, then. Small favors.

Back to the present. "So, you think Diego relapsed because he was homesick? On top of the rest of it?"

Gray ran slow fingers over the old afghan draped across the back of the couch. "Told you I don't know."

Gibbs waited him out, again. Just because the kid didn't want to think about it didn't mean he didn't know. How could he not?

"Diego'd never been anywhere else before. Maybe that's . . . I don't know." Stress in his voice now.

"Okay," Gibbs said softly.

Gray didn't seem to hear him. "One day he just – "

He sat so still, all but his eyes. They wandered all over the window, the room, counterpoint to his lifeless voice. "He gave up I guess."

Gibbs nodded.

"I asked him. Why, you know. A hundred times. And he - I don't think he knew either." Stress had turned to something else now. Dread. Fear. "He didn't know." A pause. "I thought it would be easier. Once we got here. But it's just . . . different."

Gibbs smiled sadly. When he was away, deployed, coming back here was all he could think about. And then one haul he finally made it back only to find it wasn't the same. He'd gone on, somehow, and so had life here, and being home couldn't bring him back to the person he used to be. Back to the person whose home this was. That person was gone.

They were quiet.

"We used to run, you know?" The eyes left the bookshelves, bore into Gibbs'. Steady again. "Hit fast, run fast. Outrun them – that's how we . . . did it."

The kid's stillness was really odd. It gave his words more power. Gibbs wondered if this was part of why people usually responded to _his_ words. Some of his training had culled away unnecessary movement.

"But you can't run from - it's always there," Gray said. "It got him . . . he's dead." Shock, maybe.

Duck was right, of course. Underneath it all the kid was scared. But not of bullets, or even the cartel, really.

Gibbs broke into the quiet after a minute passed with nothing more. "Sounds like you two had a lot in common, shared a lot. But that doesn't mean you'll give up like Diego did. And if you ever do," Gibbs said slowly, "there'll be people there for you. People who can help you, if you let them. Me or Ducky. My team. Even Kort - "

"No. Not doing that again," Gray said. Voice hard, all that fear a memory now. "Addicts are dangerous, Gibbs, remember? I'd do the same as Diego, just faster. Try not to shoot any friends along the way." He turned his head toward the window. "Hey, Tomas!"

The door swung open instantly and the big guy was in his living room again, snow covering his shoulders, soft flakes melting into his hair.

Gibbs stayed where he was as Gray reached up a hand and Tomas seized it, hauling him up, slinging an arm around his waist in one movement.

They were out the door a second later, gone.

Gibbs' house was always quiet. But when the door swung shut and the car outside started up and rumbled away the quiet felt sudden, somehow. Thick. He got up slowly from the couch, ignoring the few stray flakes of snow under his feet, and headed upstairs. It was time to get ready for work.


	13. Satellites

As it turned out, Gibbs didn't get a chance to track down Kort and vent his wrath - not that morning. He was on his way to the Navy Yard when AK called in the tip they'd been waiting for. AK had landed a meeting with a supplier high enough in the organization to have ties back to Colombia. Maybe even a base there. They didn't have a name for the supplier. No one knew anything about the guy's contacts abroad. There were no rumors. There was no front. Not even a pack of lies. There was nothing.

It was the lack of information that made Gibbs like him for a Calera courier.

The meeting was going down that afternoon in a diner outside Baltimore. He called the team to Abby's lab to plan the op.

"So," McGee said. "Stakeout the diner and wire our guy?"

"If this meeting is really with a high-level operative a wire will be discovered," Ziva pointed out. "Our informant will be killed and the supplier will go underground. What about agents inside? We can get a photograph of the contact, perhaps identify him that way."

Gibbs noticed she didn't say which agents should be placed inside.

"We can make the bust early if it looks like AK's in trouble," McGee protested. "Without a wire we won't have sound. Whatever happens will be useless in court."

Ziva's eyes slid over to Gibbs'. There was a long pause.

"I don't think there'll be any safe way to get sound," Gibbs said. "The best we can hope for is identifying and tracking the supplier."

Abby frowned. "But if this mystery man operates from a base in Colombia he might not even be here long enough to pin him to anything else in the States. It could be years before he meets with AK again, if he ever does."

Gibbs nodded, not looking at any of them. "Those are the breaks, Abs. We'll just get what we can. Do you still have that – " he waved a hand. "That radioactive water you used on Gray?"

"The isotope? Sure," she frowned. "What for?"

"Send a bottle to AK – I want him to glow in the dark by the time he goes into this meeting. Have an agent drop it at a messenger service, somewhere generic. The service sends the package on to him at his house. Make sure it can't be linked back to us."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You think they'll move him? And check for locators . . . We can have a team outside photograph the entrance and exit, another in a car ready to follow."

Gibbs nodded. It wasn't lost on him that Tony hadn't specified which teams.

He rested his hands on the shiny surface of Abby's stainless steel lab table and leaned over it, letting the table take his weight. His agents stared as the seconds ticked by. It wasn't a pose they saw often, but everyone in the room recognized it. This was what Gibbs looked like when he was struggling.

The lab was tense as they waited for him to push into action, to give orders. But he didn't. He didn't move at all, because he wasn't really there.

_They'll come after everyone close to you . . . You know that. You just don't give a fuck. It'll be the same as when they killed -_

It'll be the same.

It'll be the same.

"Okay," Tim said finally. "Abby, you have the cameras? I'll get the truck – "

It damn well would be the same, if he hadn't changed. Gray was right about that.

But the thing was, Gibbs had changed. Once upon a time he would have done this on his own, accepted the risk, and gladly. But he honest to god wasn't sure anymore that he'd be able to shake his team. He could feel them looking at him. He could feel the damp heat of the jungle and his own fierce, dark terror. Not for himself. For them. His team, stumbling along in front of him. Tony crumpling under a punch, out of his mind against that truck. Ziva's head, hitting metal, their faces in that debrief -

No. Unacceptable.

"None of us is going anywhere near that diner, Tim," Gibbs broke in.

McGee frowned. "Huh?"

Gibbs looked up in time to catch Tony and Ziva exhaling in relief. His heart stuttered. "No one who can be traced back to me is going to be involved in this op," he said. "Not on the ground. They know who I am. They find anyone connected to me sniffing around one of their top men and you'll all be dead inside a week. Or they'll go underground," Gibbs nodded at Ziva, who'd called it, "and we'll lose them."

He pushed away from the table. "I'll arrange for surveillance from outside the agency. Abby, you set up that trace. McGee, I need Kort on the phone yesterday. Find him."

Gibbs turned to leave.

"Um, Boss," McGee shot a look at Ziva. "I heard Kort was out of town . . . ?"

Gibbs paused long enough to pull his phone from his pocket and toss it to McGee. "He's the unknown number six days back, Saturday. The call was made from Germany. If you can't trace him before the meeting at the diner, then you get me his boss at the CIA."

Gibbs turned on his heel and walked out of the lab.

McGee looked down at the phone in his hand. "But - we're giving up the op?" To some other team? It was unimaginable. Not to mention - "If we don't have sound,  don't have an agent in there - we won't even have a witness."

Tony and Ziva exchanged a look.

"He was talking to Kort six days ago," Tony said grimly. "You know what that means."

Abby's eyes traveled back and forth between the two of them. "What does that mean?"

"We weren't working on anything near CIA jurisdiction six days ago, Abby," Tony said.

"But both Kort and Gibbs expected that we eventually would," Ziva put in. "They have been in touch, in cahoops, waiting for the right opportunity."

"Cahoots," Tony said. "They absolutely have."

"So, what you're saying is . . ." Abby faltered. "All this drug bust stuff we've been doing . . . you're saying we're not going to trial with it. Any of it? Is that what you're saying?"

The four of them looked at each other.

"I do not think a court of law is part of Gibbs' plan for this cartel, no," Ziva said.

"This is prep work, isn't it," Tim said, voice low. "But not to arrest them. This is for an op like he did before. To assassinate them."

Tony and Ziva cast a pair of long looks his way before they turned and walked out of the lab. Tim moved to follow, detouring at the last moment to give Abby a one armed hug. She hugged him back, and then he was gone, and the lab was quiet again.

Abby took a deep breath. Then she turned up her music and mixed up a bottle of water that would make the drinker light up like a Christmas tree – one imported from Chernobyl.

Gibbs took the elevator directly up to Vance's office and explained what he needed. Untraceable surveillance, fast.

The meet at the diner was at 1700. By 1530 surveillance was in place, monitoring anyone coming and going, the team in the field hooked into communications with MTAC via satellite. Photos began relaying back almost immediately. Gibbs' team gathered in front of the enormous screen to watch the images as they streamed in.

"Who are these people," Tony complained. "Do they even have undercover experience?"

"They're a Special Ops team, Dinozzo," Gibbs said absently. "Usually based in the Far East. They've got all sorts of experience."

"If they are spotted and identified?" Ziva asked.

"Abby worked with Vance on that. She said as far as she could tell these guys don't have real identities. All that exists is a pile of ready-made bogus ID's," McGee spoke up from the desk where he was wrestling with several different tracing programs at once. "Their latest fake backgrounds were released into State and Federal databases two hours ago."

At 1630 McGee handed Gibbs a cell phone.

"I couldn't find him, Boss," he said apologetically. "This is his boss. Uh, Kort's boss, I mean."

Gibbs brought the phone up to his ear. "Yeah, this is Gibbs."

"This is David Holdner, Agent Gibbs. I understand you need something from me?"

Gibbs recognized the voice. It was the supervisor from their CIA debriefing.

"NCIS is following a lead and we may require your resources to keep up with it. This is Kort's usual area but I haven't been able to track him down."

"Agent Kort is expected to return next week."

"This lead will be in play in thirty minutes," Gibbs said shortly.

"What do you need?"

"Satellite."

"Where?"

"Here. And wherever the lead goes, if he decides to travel."

There was a long pause. Gibbs waited. Some agency or another would have satellite coverage in place over the DC area at all times. The question was whether Holdner had enough clout to get real-time access to it at such short notice.

"Agent Gibbs, I'm going to give you a number." Gibbs snapped his fingers for McGee and brought him in close enough to hear. "Call it if you need coverage. Your name will work as authorization for the next twelve hours. The number is this area code, 607-5781."

McGee nodded. "Got it," he mouthed.

"Good luck, Agent Gibbs."

Gibbs closed the phone and McGee turned to move back to the desk he'd been working at.

"Hey!" Gibbs reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. "You call it in the second they move him out of that diner, and you use my name, not yours. You got me, McGee?" McGee's name did not need to appear on any logs involving this op.

"Yes Boss."

"Good. Now bring up AK on that tracing program. I want to admire Abby's Christmas tree."

AK walked into the diner at 1700 and sat in a booth. There was grainy video feed from the Special Ops team, coming out of a tiny camera across the restaurant. At 1710 another figure sat in the booth.

"Dinozzo, McGee! I want an ID."

"On it." Tony went through the recent photos of people entering the diner, pulling up the figure in the booth and feeding it to McGee.

The Special Ops cover in the diner informed them that the new man ordered a cup of coffee. Then the new man and AK talked for several minutes.

At 1726 they left the diner. Rush hour.

"McGee!"

McGee was already on the phone.

A voice came through the link with their Special Ops team. "Target is leaving the diner with unknown . . . target is in a white Dodge Charger four-door, Virginia license plate Echo Kilo November 628 . . . target is moving south on McCormick . . . turning right onto Lafayette Avenue. Southwest on Lafayette . . ."

They watched the blue dot move steadily through a map of suburban Baltimore. Gibbs glanced at McGee and decided yelling wasn't going to speed anything up. The agent was talking on the phone to whoever had picked up at the number the CIA supervisor had given them, his hands a blur over the three keyboards in front of him.

Seven minutes after AK walked out of the diner, satellite coverage replaced the map of DC behind the blue dot. McGee slumped back, sighing with relief.

"I want that ID, McGee!" Gibbs yelled.

"Boss, the car is a rental out of Dulles under the name John Casey . . . pulling up the photo ID," Dinozzo said. He and Ziva were hovering over the shoulder of one of the techs, both turning as one to glance between the picture of the man driving the Charger and the driver's license photo that came up. "Photo matches the contact, Boss," Tony said, surprised.

"I want – "

"Everything there is to know on John Casey. On it." Tony turned back to muttering instructions to the tech.

As the car drove out of DC traffic and the satellite coverage held true, Gibbs instructed the surveillance team to back off. They were too exposed on the emptier roads. The team complied, waiting in the wings in case Gibbs needed them to close back in.

Fifty minutes after AK and the contact left the diner the sun had set, they'd shifted to a different satellite, and most of the image was dark. But Abby's blue dot was still bright. The car AK was in turned onto a private road, approaching an area glowing with long rows of thin lights. "That's an airport," Gibbs said. "Where are they?"

"Walnut Hill Airport," McGee read off the screen in front of him. "I"m pulling flight manifests."

The car stopped near a small plane. The two figures inside got out and were greeted by a third, then entered the aircraft.

"It's too dark to read the tail numbers," McGee said tersely.

"Should we call the airport to get identification?" Ziva asked.

"No. Whoever this guy is he could have people on the inside there," Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "Get me Kort's supervisor, McGee."

AK exited the plane alone half an hour later. They watched as the lights in the rented Charger came on and he drove away. The plane began moving, taxiing down the runway and lifting into the air.

Gibbs and his team cleared out of MTAC not long after.

Satellite coverage of the plane, along with discreet observation of its occupants wherever it touched down again, had been secured through CIA Boss. Over the next hours and days they followed the jet to a private airfield outside of Denver, then LA, Houston, and Atlanta.

Two weeks passed. And then Kort came back.

**x**

The team was in the field that morning.

When they stepped out of the elevator Kort was leaning against Gibbs' desk. Standing in their empty bullpen like he was lord of the manor.

At least he wasn't sitting in the boss's chair.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dinozzo, of course.

Kort ignored him totally, focusing instead on Gibbs. "I need to talk to you."

Anger punched through Gibbs like a fist, just at the sight of the man, at the sound of Kort's voice. He was still pissed about the kid who had been left to bleed on his porch, and not-cry on his living room floor.

Gibbs brushed past him, sitting down at his desk and leaning over to grab the old report forms. He was pretty sure he was the only agent in the building still filling them out by hand, but Processing accepted the handwritten along with the computerized ones, so what did he care? 

Gibbs began writing and Kort just stood there. Staring at him.

"So talk," Gibbs said. He kept his eyes on the form and half-heartedly shoved down his temper. As far as Gibbs could tell the CIA Agent used Gray for information and left him to twist in the wind, off the grid and without support. If Kort was the only one who could get Gray medical attention without raising red flags in the system, Kort damn well should have stayed around to make sure the kid would have it. That was the least he should have done.

"Without an audience, Gibbs."

Gibbs' grip tightened on the pen, but he went on filling in the mindless info required at the top of the form. He didn't need his glasses for that bit - after twenty years he could do the generic part blind. Unfortunately, it didn't require any mental focus, either, and it didn't keep his attention. 

If Kort was going to use the kid like a partner then he should at least _be_ a real partner. Should have been there when Gray was trying to help Diego, and then when he lost his friend. If Kort wasn't up to protecting Gray, if he was too busy to _bother_ looking out for him, then maybe Kort should be the one to hold the kid down next time he got shot.

"Say what you have to say and get out, Kort."

Tony watched with a sort of gleeful fascination, McGee and Ziva with slightly more concern. Gibbs was pissed. And he was becoming more pissed before their eyes.

Kort didn't seem to care about the boss's incendiary mood, or question it. He hesitated, then actually glanced around and lowered his voice, leaning in to reluctantly say what he'd come to say. He talked to the top of the boss's head, as Gibbs was by all appearances too busy chopping through his paperwork to spare the man a glance.

"I've flipped one of his lieutenants."

Gibbs stopped writing, looked up slowly. He'd flipped someone inside the fortress?

"And how did you do that?"

Kort rolled his eyes. 

A deal.

It made Gibbs' blood burn, absolutely boil in his veins. One of the Calera lieutenants was getting a deal. What about the two kids Gibbs found shivering on his porch, what did they get? Separated from their families way too young, and no one to look out for them. What else? Addicted to heroin. Burned and shot and stabbed. And that was just what Gibbs knew for sure, what he'd seen with his own eyes.

Meanwhile a lieutenant who had probably made money off of the suffering of those very kids, probably _gotten off_ on their suffering, was getting a deal. Possibly something that would manoeuver him right into a big fat promotion in the drug world anyway, so he could go on ruining lives and living large. Perfect.

And what could Gibbs do about it? Nothing. The kid wouldn't come to him. Kort had Gray's trust, for some twisted reason. Kort had enough CIA backing to do what he wanted on this case, and Kort had Gibbs' team by the balls because he'd orchestrated Gibbs' rescue - because Gibbs had been stupid enough to get himself into thatsituation. Because Paloma Reynosa grew up, and Gibbs had made enemies of cartels, and allowed them to live. Because his team was loyal, despite his mistakes. Because Gibbs murdered Pedro Hernandez. He couldn't help but feel that even twenty years on, karma was a bitch. His agents watched as Gibbs gripped his pen a little tighter, turned a little redder. Definitely on the verge of explosion.

But Gibbs simply turned back to his paperwork. "Well, good for you," he said. "What does that have to do with me."

"He'll be incarcarated until he's fulfilled his end of the deal," Kort plowed on. "Along with two others on the fringes of the organization. I need a place to hold them once they're transfered to the States. The NCIS pens would be ideal, more private than anything the CIA has stateside and less likely to end up on Calera radar, as long as you keep your head down. We'll also need Gray to observe the interrogations and corroborate, which can't happen overseas." Kort paused thoughtfully. "Not easily, anyway."

Gibbs abandoned the form again. "Excuse me? Gray will what?"

"His information is too valuable to waste, Gibbs." Kort spoke to Gibbs like he was some green probie. "There will be risks in bringing him here, of course. I'll arrange protection."

Kort actually sounded pleased, while Gibbs' stomach lurched. He didn't want the kid interacting with Londono's lieutenants, former or not. And how successful had they been at protecting him so far? Kort's standards on that score didn't exactly seem high. Burned, shot, stabbed . . .

Gibbs stared at his paperwork, too angry to make much pretense of filling it out. "Well, you're pulling the strings, Kort," he said, very quiet. "You make a deal with El Diablo, I'm sure the director will let you use our pens to hold him."

Kort shoved his hands into the pockets of his perfect suit. He looked like he might be getting irritated, losing a little of his cool. Tony drank it in. Really, had the man expected a high-five?

"It isn't El Diablo, unfortunately," Kort drawled. "It's one of the men who worked for Diablo under Londono. But, get the right intel out of him, sweeten the pot with a really nice deal," he taunted, "and yes, Gibbs. I might well get the devil to flip."

El Diablo. The devil. Abby had done her research, just as Gibbs asked, and found out more about Declan O'Donnell. She had told them, face pale, of rumors stemming from rural Colombian villages, the stories that circulated among the foot soldiers of cartels. Abby showed them transcripts of interviews done by aid agencies. She explained how Declan O'Donnell earned his nickname. They knew, now, what the scars on Gray's torso meant.

Gibbs couldn't see properly out of his peripheral vision anymore. Red mist floated at the edges of the room, and he'd have sworn Gray's high scream, that one note of pain from the clearing, echoed in his ears. He stood and came slowly out from behind his desk.

Kort didn't take a step back, didn't move a muscle. Ziva was fair-minded enough to admit, in the privacy of her own mind, that this was impressive.

The entire team, on the other hand, backed off. While they would obviously have Gibbs' back, there were times when the best thing you could do for the bossman was get out of his way.

"I'm curious, Kort." Gibbs' voice was calm, but loud, and his face was red. The team exchanged _oh shit_ glances and edged back again. "How do you make a deal with someone who actually works for the devil. Did you join in the fun to earn their trust?" His voice softened and his eyes grew hard, the words like stones dropped into a black pool, a whisper sent into the abyss. "Is that how you met Gray?"

Kort stepped forward. "That offends you doesn't it, Gibbs. You've heard the stories about El Diablo, hm? You think some of the taint will rub off on you? You don't have to worry," he said gently, and then he leaned so close he was practically whispering in Gibbs' ear. "You can have your _noble_ crusade. You can even play the hero, patch Gray up and hold his hand, after the boy and I have done the dirty work."

It was too fast to see. But the bullpen was silent now, all eyes on them, and Gibbs' fist hitting Kort's face sounded like bones breaking.

Kort spun with the force of it, but he didn't go down. He straightened back up and looked at Gibbs again, utterly cool, ignoring the wash of blood already running down his chin, dripping steadily onto his snowy white shirt. His hands were still in his pockets.

Gibbs waited for him to hit back, but Kort just grinned, eyes running over Gibbs' face as if he was fascinated by it. "Amazing. All this time and your own family, and you'll never understand it, will you?"

Gibbs was a statue. Rigid.

"You can't fight the devil with your fists, Gibbs. Or even with that shiny rifle you're so proud of." Kort paused, mocking, considering the problem. "You want to tear him to pieces, don't you, destroy him like you destroyed Hernandez. Though you must know by now that didn't solve a thing?"

Kort paused. Gibbs focused on the pain in his hand, and reached for sanity. "Get out of here, Kort."

The CIA Agent's voice was warm, friendly as he leaned in close again. "I'll tell you a secret, Gibbs. Taming the devil is simple, if you have the balls. Just ask your Kidon lapdog." Kort glanced pointedly at Ziva. "All you need to do is befriend his children. Steal them away and make them your own. That's already worked well enough for you, hasn't it?"

Kort's smile was full of teeth.

That time when Gibbs swung, Kort did too. The agents watching let them go at it, until Vance came out and called security, and guards pulled the silent, bleeding men apart.


	14. Three Short

When Gibbs got home that night there were two cars lurking near the house. The familiar one was parked down the street, empty. Another he'd never seen before was directly across from his house. A figure sat inside.

David Holdner, CIA Boss in the flesh. He climbed out of the car and walked up to meet Gibbs, following the concrete path leading from the driveway to the porch, pausing in the middle of the wintery gray lawn. "Agent Gibbs. Either your relationship with David is closer than I would have guessed or you have an intruder in there," Holdner nodded at the house.

Gibbs jiggled his keys in his hand. "Ziva's welcome anytime." _As opposed to . ._ .

Holdner smiled. "I have some information to share that I think you'll find interesting. If that will buy my welcome?"

Gibbs' gaze grew sharp. He led the man into his house and they sat down at the battered kitchen table over coffee.

Holdner let his eyes roam over Gibbs' face. "Well. If you had to have a schoolyard scuffle I'm glad my boy gave as good as he got."

Gibbs was less in the mood for small talk than he'd ever been. "Is the plane still in Atlanta?"

"No. It left about an hour ago. Looks like they're bound for Miami."

Gibbs nodded, staring into his coffee. Miami didn't mean anything, it was a hub for a hundred cities. They could be headed anywhere from there –

"If our intelligence is correct they'll stay in southern Florida for several days before flying on to Valledupar, Colombia."

Gibbs looked up. Intelligence meant – "You've ID'd it," he said.

"Yes. It landed at a private strip in Georgia, but we were able to get eyes on it. The jet belongs to a real estate magnate with holdings in Florida and throughout Colombia."

Gibbs felt fierce satisfaction well up in his gut. "It's them."

Holdner nodded. "We believe so. Now all that remains is identifying and tracking the supplier onboard. Then identifying and tracking his contacts, their contacts . . ." Holdner waved a hand dismissively at the massive undertaking.

But it was cracked now. If they were right about the plane and who was in it, who those people worked for, it was their chance to pry the cartel wide open. Kort's informant would explain and confirm what they gathered, fill in the blanks.

"You've got people in place to gather intel?"

"Hm. As it happens, the Caleras are held responsible for bringing down two helicopters with US personnel on board a few years ago, including several Special Operations soldiers. Based on that, your director was able to persuade Spec Ops Command to send a team down to Valledupar. They'll be waiting when the plane lands. The surveillance will be skeletal, obviously. Spook this cartel and they'll go to ground for years."

Gibbs nodded. The need for secrecy would make progress slow, but it was a start. "You get any farther than we did with John Casey?"

The license they'd pulled for the man who met AK in the diner turned out to be an incredibly sophisticated fake. An entire identity had been created – license, clean financials, phones – it was all there. The documents were real. It was just that they were for a person who didn't exist. It was exactly the kind of deep cover ID that agents used when they were undercover, and practically impenetrable.

If they could bring in local law enforcement then identification might not have been such a problem, no matter how sophisticated the cover. Every criminal has to start somewhere afterall, and their early photos and prints should still be in databases, like Declan O'Donnell's in Belfast. But alerting locals to a hunt for the dozens of men that must be running Londono's operation was out of the question – the Caleras seemed to be in deep everywhere they operated. McGee mentioned that even running the ID's through the systems could alert hackers on the Calera end to searches targeted at their people.

"We have an ID," Holdner said, sipping his coffee and looking at Gibbs over the rim. "But it wasn't us who pegged him."

"Oh yeah? FBI?"

"No."

"Interpol?"

"No."

Gibbs waited, but Holdner didn't say anything. "You want me to guess?"

"No government agency in any country had any idea who he is."

No government agency? That meant an insider . . .

"El Diablo's man," Gibbs said tersely.

"No. He will be a valuable asset, but the paperwork on Trent's little intelligence coup hasn't been signed quite yet."

They were silent, Gibbs staring into his coffee.

"You had to know this was coming." Holdner studied him like a bug under a microscope. "They're too cautious for outside surveillance to dig up who their members are or where they're from, much less what they do for the cartel. Any surveillance deep enough to be of use there would also tip them off to the fact that they're being watched. We only have one contact who could identify that man, as you well know."

Gibbs shook his head.

"Gray ID'd him," Holdner continued. "Apparently our 'John Casey' does go by Casey, though we don't know if that's a first or last name, or if John is real at all. According to the boy he's a gopher for a high-level operative in the cartel. Has been for many years."

Gibbs eventually looked up to return the other man's close stare, breathing deliberately, calmly. His temper hadn't nearly run its course on this and they just kept pouring fuel on the fire. "Kid must have climbed the ranks fast."

"He's ambitious," Holdner agreed lightly.

Gibbs just looked at him. No child running around in the jungle outside of those camps should be able to identify the organization's brass. Especially in an organization where the brass stays well clear of the foot soldiers.

The other man sighed. "Come on. You don't see it?"

"I can guess. Just - rather not," he admitted.

"Then I suggest you ask him."

Ask Gray?

Gibbs laughed. That only ever got him anywhere when the kid was post-trauma. Delirious or zeroing in on shock, and minus a pint or two of blood.

"Oh, I know." Hofner grinned. "Believe me, I know."

"Yeah? You've had a crack at questioning him? I thought the kid was Kort's trophy, locked in the trophy case." Or a puppet, brought out to play when he was useful. It burned that Gibbs didn't have the power to protect Gray from the CIA chessboard, literally burned. His stomach felt like it was full of coals.

"Mmm. Is that why you've been digging into Trent's background? Trying to figure out how that alliance happened?"

Gibbs returned the man's look unapologetically. Holdner just smiled.

"You won't find anything."

Well, they hadn't found exactly what they were looking for, that was true. But Gibbs scoffed, because his team hadn't come up empty either. "We've traced him all the way back to Manchester Grammar School."

Holdner grinned. "Oh, I bet you have. Pretty boring background for an agent of his swagger, isn't it?"

Gibbs sat back, trying to read the odd humor in the other man's eyes. The silence stretched out between them until Holdner raised his eyebrows and laughed, big and jolly.

"You telling me it's fake? All of it?" Gibbs said incredulously.

"To a point," Holdner grinned.

He turned the coffee mug set before him in long fingers, studying the scarred top of Gibbs' ancient kitchen table. The cheerful face fell away, replaced by something more like earnest. "I met Trent when he was young and desperate. To be fair I was desperate too at the time. He saved my life. More than once. In return I helped him to escape a difficult situation, to start a new life of his own. I've never thought of him as my 'trophy' but I don't deny that he's been a useful recruit."

_When he was quite young . . . never thought of him as my trophy –_

Gibbs stared at the man. "You gave him a new life? He's not British?"

"He's an American now, actually."

Gibbs jerked his head in frustration. "He wasn't born in Britain?"

"No." Holdner paused. "His father was British, a member of the SAS. But Trent was born in Lebanon."

"And Trent Kort isn't his name," Gibbs ground out.

"It wasn't the one he started out with, no. I gave him that name, the day I met him." Holdner leaned back and crossed his arms over his belly, still chuckling. Gibbs' stony expression didn't seem to affect his mood in the slightest.

"I was based in Lebanon for several years, saw some of the worst of the civil war there. One project went bad and I was surrounded by hostile forces, injured, too far out to make it home. I couldn't walk on my own, had no water. I'd been stuck there for two days when he found me. I came to after a mortar attack to find this kid staring at me. We were trapped there until he ran a gauntlet to lay some charges we'd rigged up at their feet, completely nuts. Was cool as a cucumber through it all, too cool to be sane. He got us out of it, though, dragged me along with him for some reason that I still don't entirely understand."

Holdner paused. "We'd survived, but it was risky as hell and I was livid. I was sure I'd have found a safer way. As he likes to point out, I still haven't quite worked out what that would have been," he admitted. "After we'd gotten clear he tried to dump me with a medic and disappear. I lost it, hollered at him and everyone else that he was three short of a six-pack. He didn't even understand the phrase, though, given his English at the time. At that point I had enough backup to start throwing my weight around. I insisted that he surrender his weapons to me. That I was going to evacuate him. I think he went along with it because our canteen was the best stocked kitchen in the city. He packed away everything I put in front of him. It was incredible."

Holdner grinned fondly before picking up the narrative again.

"Before I could get him out the two of us ended up stuck in a . . . well, another tricky spot. We were cut off for three months. I lost several people." He paused, eyes far away. "Trent has a prickly personality but he is also preternaturally calm. Have you noticed that? Nothing rattles him. He was sanguine through it all, defying the boundaries of any rational person under stress, much less a child. Whenever I pointed this out he would remind me that he was three short of a six-pack." Holdner laughed. "Smart-ass from the beginning. We were in the company of a French Foreign Legion unit at the time, since I was ostensibly under their protection. You know how legionnaires can't join up under their own names?"

Gibbs nodded. Traditionally Legionnaires left their old lives behind, even their old names, and signed up under aliases.

"They took me in because they were ordered to. They allowed Trent to tag along as well, since I'd tried to take him under my wing. Of course he was also a useful source of information. He knew the people, the geography, and he could take care of himself - he'd been involved in the fighting for years. Trent the legionnaires actually liked, for his information, and they were impressed by his recklessness. He became a sort of mascot to them. They thought 'Three Short' was a fantastic alias, and called him 'Short,' since he was at the time." Holdner smiled. "It stuck."

Gibbs frowned, sorting through the bizarre story. "Trent Kort? That's . . . trente court is thirty short."

"Did a stint in Paris didn't you? When I was making out his birth certificate I thought "Trois" as a first name might not go down so well for an English kid. He'd get the crap beat out of him no matter how badass he was. When I finally managed to pull him out of Lebanon I went with Trent instead."

'Making out' his birth certificate. Forging it, more like. Gibbs rubbed a hand across his forehead. "A kid."

"Don't bother looking into his background. You won't find anything he doesn't want you to know. Like your Agent David there are some things he'd rather stay buried, and for good reason."

Gibbs set his jaw against the shiver crawling up his spine. "So you sent Kort to Colombia to recruit child soldiers as informants. Because he was one."

"Damn right I did." Holdner stood. "Don't be fooled by his efforts to provoke you, Agent Gibbs. Trent only charms the ones he doesn't trust. The fact that you even know Gray exists is proof of his regard. He holds you in high esteem."

Gibbs blinked up at him.

Holdner let curious eyes run around Gibbs' living room, cataloging the worn furniture, the stacks of books. "The South African op was in the works for two years," he said absently. Like he was talking to himself. "We had to keep pushing it back. Trouble was Kort - he didn't expect to make it out." Holdner's gaze shifted suddenly, sweeping over the agent in front of him in blatant appraisal. "That didn't use to bother him. This time around though . . . guess he wanted to get his affairs in order."

Gibbs frowned. "I'm one of his affairs?" Incredulous again.

"No," Holdner laughed. "I think you're on the getting-things-in-order side of things, Gibbs. Fortunately Trent did survive. But that means the two of you need to work together on the Calera front." Holdner scratched his head ruefully. "Not something Trent really anticipated, I don't think," he muttered.

Gibbs could only stare at the man.

Holdner stared back, and for once, it seemed, was totally serious. "What I came here to say, Gibbs, is that you should trust him where Gray is concerned. He knows where that boy is at, understands him better than you or I ever will. Thank you for the coffee," he nodded, already turning away. "We'll be in touch when surveillance goes live in Valledupar."

Gibbs sat at his kitchen table and watched him walk out the door.

**x**

He found her in the basement of course, sitting in the shadows, the exact spot where her brother had waited for him years before.

She watched him as he crossed the room and pulled out a stool, but when he sat and faced her she let her gaze wander over the walls.

"What's up, Ziva?"

"Well - " She waved vaguely toward the stairs. "First of all you should probably know that I . . . overheard. Most of that."

"Yeah. I figured." Holdner must have assumed she'd been eavesdropping too. "Why're you here?"

She nodded and rubbed her hands together, straightened her back. "I have acquired some information about Gray. And, well, Cassie too I suppose."

He crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

"He may not appreciate my telling you this." She glanced at him. Frowned. "But I do not think that it reveals anything that you do not already . . . know. Suspect. About him, anyway."

She slipped to her feet and took a step forward, meeting his gaze. "You know that I - " she stopped abruptly, hands mid-gesture, and started over, posture stiff as her words. "You may recall that you once recommended a private clinic to me. One that specializes in recovery from - " slice of an arm through the air, and a pivot, to take her gaze away from his " - assault. I did not make use of most of the services there. But they do hire an excellent martial arts instructor to teach a class in self-defense. Which I took." She wrinkled her nose. "It was very basic. And I . . . well, I proposed a more advance course." She crossed her arms over her chest. Uncrossed them. "I teach a class there now. One day a week, before work."

Gibbs grinned.

She glanced at him, caught the look, and finally relaxed. Hands dropping, and her shoulders too. After a moment she smiled back at him, beautiful. "I enjoy it."

"I bet."

"When we got back from Colombia . . . I . . ." She managed to hold his gaze this time, with a little effort, even as the grin slipped from his face. "I wanted to brush up on my skills. I engaged the instructor in advanced private lessons, twice a week. We exchange techniques. I think it . . ." A hand came up again, unconscious. Soft gestures this time. "I think it has been beneficial."

He nodded. She'd been jumpy for weeks after the attack in the jungle, but it had settled in time. Apparently beating the crap out of a martial arts expert had helped.

"I had to reschedule my session last week. We arranged to meet at a different time, on a different day." She straightened her shoulders once more. "I spotted Cassie and Gray when I was leaving the clinic, Gibbs. They were in the company of two others who I did not recognize."

Gibbs stared at her.

"I do not believe they saw me. But I am sure it was them."

He nodded, already preoccupied.

"You know who runs that clinic, Gibbs."

He sure as hell did.

 

 

 

 


	15. Couples Therapy

"Somebody better be dead."

"Gibbs. Get up and get your ass down here."

" . . . Fornell?"

"Get up, Gibbs! And get down here!"

Tobias sounded short of breath, like he was hurrying somewhere.

"Down where?"

"FBI pens. Got your no-name kid in here. Again."

Gibbs sat up, reaching out in the pitch black for the lamp even as he rolled to his feet. "Dargas arrest him?" He grabbed for the jeans folded in the laundry basket and hopped into them. "What charges?"

"No, Gibbs. I arrested him. Assault and battery. Now get up and get your ass down here."

Fornell hung up.

**x**

The kid was sitting at an interrogation table, hands folded in front of him. He looked relaxed. Gibbs studied Gray through the glass and decided he had absolutely no idea if it was real or just a front.

"You didn't cuff him?"

"He didn't resist."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. Suspects on violent offenses were cuffed, period. 

Fornell shrugged, and Gibbs sipped his coffee thoughtfully. Why was Fornell playing nice with Gray?

Fornell was more of a chugger than a sipper, no matter what the beverage, and he'd already drained the coffee Gibbs brought along as the customary bribe. Course, he'd been up a lot longer than Gibbs. The arrest was made at 2330 and he'd called Gibbs at half past three.

"Don't suppose you know his name yet?" Tobias probed.

"Nope. So what's the plan?"

"The plan?" Fornell was grouchy. He wasn't a middle-of-the-night person. "The plan is you go in there and get him to tell you who the girl is and what the hell happened, that's the plan. And try not to pull your weapon on any FBI agents you meet along the way."

Gibbs smirked. So he was a little assertive with security when he arrived. Fornell had been MIA and Gibbs was not in the mood to haggle with front desk jockeys.

"You think we need to get a CWA in here?" Fornell grimaced and checked his watch. It'd be hours before a child welfare advocate would arrive.

"Pretty sure he's emancipated," Gibbs grunted, grinning for some reason that Fornell didn't have the patience to figure out. Apparently Gibbs _was_ a middle-of-the-night person.

Still Jethro hesitated a moment and stared at Gray, who stared back, unseeing, through the opaque mirror.

Fornell had no idea that the kid wasn't likely to spill his guts to Gibbs. To put it mildly. And Gibbs wasn't about to enlighten him, not before he at least had a chance to coax some information out of Gray. Besides, he might get lucky. Gray could be feeling chatty.

Gibbs looked amused when he entered the room and pulled out a chair across from Gray. He settled down quietly and sat there for awhile, enjoying his coffee, by all appearances, and admiring the wall just beyond the kid's head.

Gray's face stayed blank for the first minute. And the second. Somewhere toward the end of the third his eyebrows came together a bit. That was probably the best invitation Gibbs was going to get.

"Fancy meeting you here," Gibbs said.

The kid stared.

"How's the leg?" Gibbs asked.

More staring. And then, finally . . . "Fine."

Back in the observation room Fornell perked up. That was the first word Gibbs' kid had said since the scene.

"All healed up?" No way. It'd been less than three weeks.

The kid shrugged.

"FBI sent me in to talk to you. They're hoping you'll tell me what happened."

"Already told them."

"Yeah." Gibbs sipped his coffee. "Heard you confessed to beating up one Joshua Burnett, fifty-two, of Silver Springs."

Silence.

"In case you're curious," Gibbs continued, "in addition to knocking him out you broke his collar bone and cracked two ribs. Gave him multiple contusions, lacerations and a concussion. They put six stitches in his lip."

An indifferent pause. 

"Ouch," Gray said finally.

Gibbs laughed. "Yeah."

Fornell crossed his arms over his chest. Gibbs could be a lot of things, but indifferent, especially to an arrest that got him out of bed at four in the morning, wasn't one of them.

"Course," Gibbs sounded like he was still smiling, "if the FBI knew you like I know you they'd realize their mistake." Gibbs looked into Gray's eyes and thought, _If you went after Burnett, he'd be in the morgue_.

The kid didn't react to that, but the quiet between the two of them got heavy. In the observation room the low buzz of recording equipment was suddenly obnoxious.

"I don't have the leverage to force answers out of you tonight. That's fine." Gibbs shrugged. "We can just sit here till they get bored and send me home. It'll take them a few days to organize a bail hearing for you. You'll have to stay in the cells here till then."

The kid seemed to accept that. If the total lack of reaction was anything to go by.

Silence.

Fornell uncrossed his arms and sat down in one of the plastic chairs set against the far wall. After a bit he got up again and walked close to the glass. 

Gibbs looked like he wished he'd brought along something to read.

"You know, for future reference, you should avoid criminal activity when you're in the company of anyone under FBI surveillance," Gibbs said helpfully. "Or when you're anywhere near an FBI bust. You could save me these late night trips to the Hoover building."

Silence.

Two minutes. Three. Four . . .

"Did you know that the woman with you was under FBI surveillance?"

Nothing.

"You know about Burnett's arrest record?"

The kid smirked a little. But said nothing.

Fornell watched the red second-hand sweep around the face of the clock in the observation room. Once. Twice. Three more times . . .

"So. What's with the tie?"

Gray's eyes refocused lazily on Gibbs. "What's with your face?"

"Kort beat me up," Gibbs said promptly.

The kid frowned, eyes running over the technicolor bruises on Gibbs' forehead. "Had this school thing."

Gibbs propped an elbow on the table and sat forward, intrigued. A tie to a 'school thing' on a Saturday night? And that was a nice shirt – looked like something Dinozzo would wear on a Friday night. He leaned over to get a look at the kid's shiny shoes. Grinned. "Were you headed to a school dance? Before you got arrested?"

"Coming from. Why?"

There was no doubt in Gibbs' mind on what the why referred to. "Professional disagreement. So, the girl with you was your date?"

The kid's face smoothed out.

Three more minutes. Four . . .

Gibbs shifted back in his chair. "Kort and I disagreed about a deal that was offered to one of his South African contacts. Specifically about whether or not one of his contacts here should observe the interrogations of a South African informant. I'm not in favor of it, but I don't really get a say. Took a couple of punches but eventually he hit me back."

Fornell's eyes widened. Was Gibbs . . . ?

"She wasn't my date."

He was!

"Go to school with you?"

"No."

Gibbs paused. "You really go to school?"

The kid nodded.

"Hm. Thing is, Burnett woke up an hour ago. And he said the girl with you was nicely dressed, too."

Nothing.

"Like she was going to a dance, maybe. Or coming from one."

Gray didn't even blink. "She was someone else's date."

Well, Tobias thought, Gibbs had gotten the kid to acknowledge that the girl existed, and was there. That was more than Fornell or any of his agents got.

"Burnett says it was the girl who attacked him."

Silence.

"Not you," Gibbs added.

"He's confused."

Gibbs nodded. "He did get hit on the head pretty hard."

" . . . Right."

Both agents smiled faintly at the game. "He remembers the girl so well, though. Light gray dress with small black flowers, black coat. Long dark hair. He says she had scars on her neck and right hand."

Nothing.

"She must have fled the scene before the FBI agents arrived. I guess your leg isn't up to fleeing scenes yet, huh?"

Nothing.

"You know anyone who fits that girl's description? They'd like to question her. Since she's the one actually accused of the crime," Gibbs said wryly.

Nothing. Fornell shoved his hands in his pockets and scowled. 

Gibbs tried again. "You know where to find her?"

Nothing. Fornell shifted irritably.

"Her name?"

Nothing.

Why was Gibbs putting up with this? "How about the woman who was also with you?" Gibbs said easily. "She know the girl's name? . . . What were you doing at that clinic in the first place?"

That got a glare. But nothing else.

Fornell sighed. It looked like Gibbs had run out of bargaining material.

Gibbs decided to take another tack. "Let's say you did attack Burnett. Why?"

"Self-defense," Gray said tersely.

"Burnett attacked you? Well, if we could talk to the girl we'd have another witness to confirm that."

Gray smiled, unimpressed. "You already have another witness."

"Maybe. But Ms. Snow's not talking until her lawyer gets here."

The kid shrugged. Not my problem.

Silence.

Followed by nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Fornell paced the length of the viewing room. This little incident needed to go away, and quietly, or one of the best cooperating witnesses his section had ever scored could be compromised. But a guy was in the hospital, local LEOs were at the scene - once the paramedics were called by his own agents - and the only way Fornell could see this going away was if someone got nailed for it and confessed in a hurry.

As long as it wasn't his witness that went down, or got dragged into a trial, Tobias was fine with that. Hell, they already had a kid in custody and a confession to boot.

But Gibbs, for whatever reason, seemed attached to the mini mute. Which left the mystery girl to take the fall. And that was appropriate, after all, since it was the mystery girl who had apparently knocked the snot out of Burnett. All they had to do was find her and apply the screws until she admitted it. Simple. All Jethro had to do was get the boy to give up the girl.

Gibbs studied the impassive kid across from him. He was as unreadable now as he had been in Colombia, when he slipped like a whisper into a guard hut and freed a perfect stranger. Gibbs thought about Gray going out into the DC night, alone, to find a friend. To drag a drug addict back into the fold. How many nights had he spent chasing after Diego? That's what he'd been doing, of course, when he was arrested and Gibbs bailed him out. And the night Dargas' raid caught both boys in its net, all those months ago. And the night he was shot. Gray had never given up.

He thought about the kid running through the jungle to catch up with the team, to catch up with a truck, fighting for people he hardly knew. Thought about him in a room just like this one, silent, and alone again, when a couple of FBI agents slammed him over a table. Gray had actually known the information they were after. But he'd been resolute. Immovable.

Cassie was loyal to Gray for a damn good reason. He would never give her up.

Honestly, he wasn't even sure that he wanted Gray to give them anything on Cassie. Gibbs didn't know the whole story - and he obviously wasn't going to get it from the kid.

Gibbs was stubborn, but he wasn't an idiot. There was no point in knocking his head against this wall. "So," he sighed, "you have a good time at the dance?"

Gray's eyes ran over the dreary interrogation room. "Better than lockup."

"Mm. Bet your date was prettier than me, too."

"Yep."

Gibbs tapped his index finger softly on the table. The silence stretched again, the only other sound in the room the mechanical whir of the ventilation fans.

He was done here, and bored. "Prettier than Fornell?"

Fornell opened the door to the interrogation room at that point and extracted Gibbs from it with a come hither glare.

Out in the hall Gibbs drained the last of his coffee. "I want to talk to her."

Tobias ignored him, heading toward the elevators. "That was quite a negotiation, Jethro. Reminded me of couples therapy with our ex-wife."

Gibbs didn't say anything.

"Had to do a few shrink-sanctioned relationship exercises just like that."

"I got more out of him than you got."

"True."

"So you going to let me talk to her or what?"

Fornell shook his head. "She's clammed up until her hot-shot lawyer gets here." He glanced at Gibbs and stopped dead in his tracks. "Wait a second. Do you know her? _Know_ her know her?"

"No," Gibbs shrugged. But did he . . . did Gibbs blush?

"Holy cow," Fornell said bluntly.

Gibbs tossed his empty cup into a wastebasket. Somehow, he'd managed to throw away trash inscrutably.

"Well, well, well." Fornell could barely contain his fascination. But did, just, at Gibbs' glare. "Fine, Cyrano. Give it a shot. She's waiting for her attorney up in our conference room."

They reached the elevators and Fornell hit the button. Rocked on his heels a bit. Glanced at Gibbs.

"So, Holly Snow," he pondered. "How's this going to go, Jethro? You want the couples therapist on the line or are you two still in the honeymoon phase?"

He smiled innocently at Cyrano's glare. Things were looking up. If Gibbs knew both of the witnesses they might just squeak out of this quietly, whether the kid cooperated or not.

How Gibbs happened to know both of them – that was the real mystery.

**x**

She looked up when he walked in, and smiled, watching as he closed the door firmly behind him.

"Agent Gibbs. Didn't expect to see you here." Her eyes widened as she took in his face. Narrowed faintly at his red-rimmed eyes. "What happened to you?"

He pushed a cup of vending machine coffee across the table to her and sat down. "Too many punches. Followed by too much bourbon." They were supposed to be off this weekend, anyway.

"Looks painful."

He almost smiled. "I'm told I gave as good as I got."

They sat quietly for a few moments, Gibbs letting the puzzle pieces come together in his mind.

"I didn't realize you worked so closely with the FBI," she probed. "Are you here about the embezzling case?"

"Not here for any case. Or for you," he said shortly.

Her eyebrows did that quirked . . . sort of bow thing. The inquiring look.

She'd never been bothered by his brusque manner, or at least never let on if she was. But she was smart, and put it together fast. "You know Gray? Cass?"

Oh, god. It was really her. He hadn't been sure, before, even with what Ziva told him.

All this time. It was Holly Snow. He fought down an insane urge to laugh. "How do you know them?"

Her expression smoothed out, into that perfect regal calm. "I can't say."

He nodded, looking down at the table. "They get help at your clinic?"

Holly sipped her coffee calmly.

Victims - patients - were confidential. Fair enough.

Gibbs let his eyes skim to the window, glass cloudy with the yellow-on-black glow of the parking lot lights. "Gray claims he beat up Burnett in self-defense."

Holly shifted a little. Uncomfortably? "I know."

And she's not happy about it, Gibbs noted. But not contradicting it either.

"Burnett woke up a little while ago. Said we got the wrong kid. Claims a girl attacked him." He let his eyes come back to hers. "Not that I'd have bought that it was Gray anyway."

"No? Why is that?" she asked curiously. She was always curious about things, or had been, when they'd worked together on that one case. She liked to understand things. People. It reminded him bizarrely of Abby.

"Gray usually keeps his cool, in a physical confrontation," Gibbs said. _I know him. Trust me_. "I think Burnett would be set back with a warning if he tried to threaten Gray, or anyone he was with. And if this guy turned out to be a real threat, his body would never be found. No inbetween."

Like he'd told the kid just a few minutes ago, Gibbs knew something that the FBI didn't. Gray didn't like to fight. But when he did engage, Gibbs would bet his instinct was to kill.

She looked at him. And nodded. So she knew Gray too.

"Instead we've got someone acting impulsively, but not lethally. Attacking in anger," Gibbs cocked his head. "Or fear."

Holly glanced at the door where her lawyer would be appearing any second. "Well, it sounds like you have your theory all figured out. What are you talking to me for?"

"Is the girl alright?"

"I believe so."

"Where is she?"

Holly sipped the coffee he'd set down in front of her. "Somewhere safe."

Well, that was vague.

"What I'm not sure about is why he'd lie," Gibbs put out there. "He's never lied to me before."

"Anyone would lie to protect someone they care about."

"Protect her from the FBI?" he said skeptically. How much did Holly know? "What for?"

She hesitated, and sighed. When she spoke he had the impression she knew exactly what she was handing him. He'd managed, somewhere along the line, to earn her trust. Fresh from his continual failure with Gray it felt . . . odd.

"After what happened the last time he was here?" she pointed out. "And even if the arresting agents were perfectly nice, even if it was self-defense, she could face time. Or be sent to a juvenile facility and end up with a record. Sentencing in these situations is unpredictable."

No indication that Holly knew about the danger posed by the cartel. But she did know what went on with Gray. The kid had turned to her. Was getting help at the clinic.

At least he was getting it somewhere.

Gibbs tipped back in his chair and was quiet for a minute, contemplating the fiberboard ceiling. "How do you know Burnett?"

She gazed at him, considering. "I don't, really. He's been stalking me off and on for several months. I'm not sure what his connection is to me, or if it's random. But he saw me one day at the clinic and just kept turning up," she shrugged. Being physically beautiful and a recognizable figure had a lot of advantages. But it carried a few risks as well – she'd attracted plenty of psychos over the years.

"You go to the police?"

She nodded. "I filed for a restraining order when it started."

"Since then?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't think the police could help," she said honestly. "I've dealt with this kind of thing before."

Gibbs pulled in his temper. "Were you aware he was arrested for beating his wife?" he asked flatly.

Holly stilled. "No," she said slowly. "I didn't know that." She seemed to mull something over. "He wasn't charged?"

"Wife dropped the charges. Twice." Which meant it wasn't a matter of public record.

"Damn," she sighed. "Gray knew somehow, didn't he?"

Gibbs felt his temper fade a bit. She hadn't known. "Looks that way. Burnett threaten you?"

"Yes, he did."

"Tonight? In front of the kids."

She nodded.

"He hurt you?"

Hesitation. Like maybe he had in the past, but not tonight. "It looked like a possibility."

He'd come at her, then, with both kids watching. And Cassie had attacked him.

"Why were they there?" Gibbs asked. She started to shake her head and he held up a hand to show he wasn't after anything private. "Clinic closes at nine, doesn't it?"

Holly's look was hard to read. "I was working late and they were at a winter formal. Cass came by to show me her dress," she said softly. "That's what they said, anyway."

"You think there was more to it?"

A very small shrug. "They found out that Burnett has been showing up at odd times a few weeks ago. I told them not to worry about it but . . . . for the past couple weeks they've been around a little more often. Checking in. I wasn't sure - a friend of theirs died recently. I thought that might have been what put them on edge. But if they found out this guy has a history of violence . . . "

They'd have kept an eye on Holly. And with their increased presence at the clinic Ziva had spotted them.

Gibbs rubbed his forehead and instantly regretted it. He'd clipped it on the edge of his desk when Kort tackled him. When he glanced up she was watching him with something between sympathy and laughter. She wordlessly offered back the coffee, and he reached out automatically to take a slow sip. Handed it back.

It wasn't until she'd picked it up again that it felt weirdly intimate.

But he was really tired. And Kort had punched him in the head really hard. Gibbs would be surprised if the man hadn't broken at least a few bones in his hand with that punch alone. His head hurt like hell.

"Let's see . . . " Holly rummaged in her tiny purse and came back up, a few seconds later, with a single dose packet of Advil. She handed it over with that serene smile, and nudged the coffee toward him again.

He took both, nodding his thanks.

"My pleasure." Voice . . . warm. Very warm.

Right.

Fornell's entire team knew about this incident, not to mention the LEOs who had been at the scene and the stalker who'd got the shit beat out of him. As it stood, even Kort would be hard pressed to make it all just disappear . . .

He picked the thread of the conversation back up. "If it was really just self-defense we only need to talk to her. Get a corresponding statement. She won't do any time or have a record." He would make sure of it.

Holly looked at him for a long time. And slowly, ever so slightly, shook her head.

Right.


	16. Good for It

Holly's lawyer got her released in about two minutes. Insisted she hadn't seen what happened.

He also pointed out that she didn't have to continue cooperating as sweetly with the FBI as she was. Holly happened to have two agents tailing her at the clinic because she was a consulting witness on an embezzlement case.

One of Fornell's agents found out that Burnett's wife had sought refuge at the clinic under her maiden name. Gibbs convinced Fornell's team to visit Burnett in his hospital room and go over Maryland sentencing laws for menacing by stalking. Up to five years, since he'd violated the restraining order that Holly filed. Luckily for all involved, Burnett turned out to be a Grade A coward, especially after his beatdown from an underaged girl. He dropped his charges against the mystery girl, promised he understood all of the unfortunate things that would happen to him if he continued to harass an FBI witness- not to mention his own wife - and signed a statement effectively saying he'd slipped on a banana peel.

Gray was released, since Fornell hadn't actually gotten around to filing the arrest papers. Tobias claimed Gibbs owed him beer for a year. It was possible Gibbs would actually buy the man a few.

Holly must have asked after Gray, because she and the kid left the elevator together once he was cleared. Gibbs thought about tailing them, or Gray at least, but decided to cut them off in the deserted lobby instead. Outside the doors, the sun peeked low and red over the horizon, bathing the three of them in pink light as Gibbs approached.

"Breakfast?"

Holly looked him over. Grinned. "It's a little early for steak."

"How about steak omelets?"

"Hm. Do you make em with beer?"

"Could do."

She turned to the kid. "What do you say, Gray?"

Gibbs watched him slip close enough to give her a fast and loose one-armed hug, the sort of thing football players did when they were feeling sentimental. A "see you" and he was through the doors, limping away at a pretty good clip.

Holly looked back at Gibbs, politely unsure. "Okay if it's just the two of us?"

"Yeah, course." He escorted her to her car.

**x**

She sliced mushrooms while he cracked eggs.

"What're you doing for Fornell?"

She frowned down at the razor-sharp knife, falling through mushrooms like they weren't even there. "I've never worked with him directly. But I gather he's part of an FBI team that has interest in some of my former clients. Where did you get this knife? It's fantastic."

"My grandfather. Interest?"

She scraped the mushrooms to the side and started in on the bell pepper. "They bring them in on prostitution. Open up their bank accounts and find . . . all sorts of interesting things."

Gibbs nodded. Fornell said they'd been nailing some real bigwigs for money laundering, extortion, bribery – all the usual white collar stuff. It was the same thing, basically, that he'd used Holly for at NCIS in going after a murderer. Two murderers. "Sounds familiar."

She smiled, all irony and acceptance. "It does, doesn't it? I suppose I should thank you for giving me a new career."

"You can make a career out of that?"

Holly shrugged, unbearably elegant even standing at his kitchen counter, wielding his grandfather's knife. "If you're not too picky about payment. I got a reduction in sentence and dinner from you," she grinned. "Since they've run out of sentence-time to reduce and I'm not interested in dinner with any of them, the FBI actually agreed to pay."

He doubted they offered her all that much, but then, the former Madame Snow didn't really need to make much. She might have been broke when she started out in her chosen field, but she was loaded now. Of course the FBI would levy some hefty fines as well as prison time against the perps she brought in. Gibbs bet her information more than paid for itself.

He beat the eggs silently and threw in some hot sauce. Gray would've liked his omelets.

"You know," Holly said, "when I called my lawyer a year ago and told him that you'd offered me a deal, he didn't believe it. He thought I had the wrong Gibbs."

Gibbs grunted, rummaging in the cupboard for another pan.

"When he realized I had the right Gibbs he insisted that you were famous for never offering anyone a deal. Not anyone. He thought it must be some sort of ruse on your part. Claimed you were 'devious.'"

Gibbs grinned at the eggs.

"Then I called him a few months later to say you'd offered another deal, this one to reduce my already 'easy' sentence. So he asked me if you were a client."

He barked out a laugh and she smiled, pleased. "I told him he'd know better than I would, since my business files are now in his business files." The diced pepper joined the mushrooms in a sizzling pan. "Of course," she added casually, "my defense attorney doesn't know about my role in the clinic. Not many people do."

He shrugged.

"That's all I get?" She ate a crisp sliver of pepper and he had to look away. "Come on. How'd you know?"

She leaned against the counter, watching him closely. Confident and relaxed and way too sharp.

He remembered meeting her that first time. Offering the first deal. She'd said she was good at reading people and he figured she probably was. "You meet all kinds of people as an agent," he said, vague and off-hand. Pouring the eggs into a skillet. "End up knowing all sorts of things."

"Mm." She watched as he added seasoning and put the dirty mixing bowl in the sink. "You know, a few years ago the clinic got a call from a staff psychologist at your agency. She said NCIS had found forty Chinese schoolgirls who'd been kidnapped and prepped to be sold into slavery in the US. The therapist wanted to know if we had the ability to take on the entire group until the legal tape holding up their return home could be unraveled."

Gibbs dropped in chunks of steak, a sprinkle of cheese, the butter-sauteed vegetables, and folded over the omelet. Definitely not a Ducky approved breakfast.

"It was a legitimate question for a therapist to ask," Holly went on. "Not many private clinics could handle an influx like that, especially on short notice. But I got the impression there was more to it. That we were being scoped out." She paused. "So I looked into the agency, and then the investigation and the team that made the request."

Gibbs turned to look at her when that registered. Faint surprise in his eyes.

She laughed softly. "I guess we scoped each other out. I did wonder if you knew about my role there when you offered such a very nice deal, but I couldn't figure out how that was possible."

He got out some plates. "When we brought in the Chinese girls," he said, "our director referred us to your clinic. No one else could handle that many Cantonese-speaking victims without breaking our health services budget for a year. You guys were highly recommended and cheap, but your sources of funding were hard to trace." He shrugged again. "Didn't really make sense."

"So you investigated."

"Yep."

"You must have been determined. My involvement is . . . discreet."

Gibbs threw a funny look her way at that.

Holly idly ate another bell pepper stick. She'd kept a stash. "Infamous Madame sponsoring a clinic specializing in what we specialize in – some might see it as inappropriate, or a stunt. It could hurt the clinic's reputation. So I'm an anonymous benefactor." She eyed him. "Usually."

He flipped the omelet onto a plate and cut it down the middle. Benefactor wasn't the word. Holly bankrolled the entire operation, and more. She helped to counsel battered women, arrange emergency housing, on-call services, translators - whatever was needed. She had connections, and she used them. Recruited and paid for the best staff available. She ran the damn thing. And she'd never mentioned it. Not to him or to the NCIS legal team during the deal negotiation. Not at her sentencing, when it almost certainly would have held sway with the judge. Not even when she'd fielded calls from the clinic right in front of him.

"We have our ways," he said. Not all of them exactly legal. Gibbs had been hellbent on making sure those girls got the best care available, and that included keeping them away from anything hinky. Eventually McGee hacked into the clinic's financial records and traced the bulk of the funding, through multiple accounting firms and banks, back to Holly. Gibbs would never forget the look on the probie's face when they'd realized who Daddy Warbucks really was.

He set a plate down in front of her and pulled out a chair for himself. "You've helped a lot of people."

"So have you," she smiled easily.

He'd eaten half of the food in front of him before he spoke again. "Did you tell Gray that I saved your life?"

" . . . Yes."

"You used my name, specifically?"

She frowned at his serious look and sipped from the water she'd brought in from the kitchen. "Was I not supposed to do that?"

Gibbs shook his head. "No, it's . . . doesn't matter."

Her fork paused in midair. Too sharp, he reminded himself.

"Oh no. Is that how you know him? He didn't – did he track you down to thank you?"

Gibbs shrugged.

A bubble of low laughter. "Wow. It never occurred to me . . . " She narrowed her eyes. "That doesn't sound like him, actually." She looked at him expectantly. He kept his eyes on his rapidly emptying plate. "Well. Cass could have put him up to it, I guess."

"You're sure she's alright?"

"Yes. She's fine."

Gibbs nodded.

"Do you know how Gray found you?" she ventured. "I don't think I mentioned NCIS."

"Do you know Trent Kort?"

She paused, flipping through the enormous Roladex that must be filed away in her mind. "Doesn't sound familiar. Is that who introduced you?'

Gibbs nodded.

"A visitor at the clinic?"

"He's an agent."

Holly immaculately speared and ate a chunk of steak, her look distracted. "Could he have told Gray about Burnett's record?"

Gibbs considered that. "Yeah. He could have."

But Holly said the kids seemed to peg Burnett as dangerous two weeks ago. Kort was still undercover in South Africa two weeks ago. Would Kort have been able to get and relay the information? Gray made it sound like he had no contact with Kort at all, even when he was shot . . .

She eyed him. "I'm not getting the full story here, am I?"

Gibbs hauled himself back to the present. "Long story. Listen." He flexed his hands, making the extra effort to choose the right words. She was an independent woman, but not pathologically so. Not like the kid. "If Burnett bothers you again - if anyone bothers you again, or the kids, you call me."

Her face set, a bit. "I appreciate everything you've done for me, Gibbs. But my safety isn't your - "

"No," he agreed. "But Gray's is, and it looks like he's involving himself in any threat to you. Cassie too."

"Why not let local police handle it?" she challenged mildly.

"Because that worked so well last night?"

Her eyes left his, and she frowned out the front window. "I have private security at the clinic. It just happened so fast. I never imagined Cass – " she paused. "But I should have. Gray was injured and vulnerable already, he's been limping for weeks. And if she knew Burnett was violent . . ." she trailed off. "Too many factors backing her into a corner. I just didn't see it coming."

He knew Cassie got nervous in corners. He wouldn't have predicted this either. "She attacked him?"

"Several times." Holly cleared her throat. "The first you could call self-defense. Maybe. The rest . . . we had to pull her off him."

"You think she'll be a danger to anyone else?"

Holly didn't answer for awhile. "Hopefully not." She looked him over then. "You don't know Gray because he wanted to say thank you, do you."

He brushed that off, leaned forward slightly. "What about him? You think he's alright?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"I know some of his history," he said simply. More than enough to know why he ended up at that clinic. And just enough of the present to realize that Holly had better insight on this than he did.

"Then you know why I can't discuss it."

Gibbs nodded. And waited, eyes locked on hers.

She huffed a little laugh, but her face fell quickly back to serious. "Your cases are over when you catch whoever it is you're looking for. But you know it's not the same for the victims. For survivors like Gray. It's not that simple."

It was like the kid said, _you can't run from this_. Gibbs knew it all too well.

**x**

He got the call almost two months later, a Tuesday in the dead of February. They met that afternoon on the usual park bench, overlooking the Mall.

"Gibbs. If we must meet in person I prefer an indoor rendezvous for the months that hell actually freezes over."

He couldn't resist. "Shorty. Used to warmer climes?"

Kort rolled his eyes. Sipped from the steaming cup of . . . whatever that was in his hands.

Gibbs sat on the bench next to him.

Kort was usually the one who got things moving, who did the talking. But Gibbs didn't usually have so many glaring questions. "When's he coming in?"

"Tomorrow night, 0120 if the transport is on time."

The CIA was handling the informant's flight from South Africa to DC, along with the two grunts under arrest. Kort would pick them up and bring them to NCIS, and Gibbs and the team would secure them. Interrogation would begin the next day, but not until early evening. After school let out.

Gibbs fiddled with the loose change in the pocket of his coat.

He didn't really understand what was happening with Kort, and it made him wary. Sometimes it seemed like he would do whatever was necessary to protect Gray, and other times it was like he could care less. How could he have sent him to Colombia after Gibbs? Or let him run off with no backup when Gray was chasing Diego? But that day in the bullpen, when Gibbs and Kort fought . . . it was like they were both enraged with the situation. And going over it again in his mind, Gibbs couldn't help but remember that it was a difference in method that finally made them tear into each other. Not different goals.

 _Shorty says he's good for you . . ._ "You told the kid I was good for him."

Kort looked out over the Mall, white snow and blue water. A few dark paths covered with people bundled in winter coats, enjoying the winter sun. "Yes."

"Why?"

Kort glanced at him, puzzled. "Because you are?"

He raised an amused eyebrow at Gibbs' suspicious look, turned away to watch the people again. "That surprises you? You're famous for being good with children, Gibbs. I had it from no less than three agencies. Scared, grieving, whatever it may be. They all come around for you. So I'm told."

Gibbs considered that. "Checked out my babysitting skills when you were looking for someone to take over with Gray?"

Kort shrugged.

"You were really willing to die to get this informant?" Gibbs said skeptically. He just couldn't swallow that. Kort always looked after number one.

Kort sat back, waved an impatient hand as he squinted into the sun. He seemed preoccupied, and when he spoke his voice was cold. "We could die crossing the street, Gibbs. I'd much rather go bringing the Caleras down."

The hairs on the back of Gibbs' neck stood up. "Risking your life, your career . . ." That was personal. "What'd they do to you?"

The voice didn't change at all. "I brought you in to be Gray's friend, Gibbs. Not mine."

"Well, you miscalculated. Gray isn't really a kid in anything but age. And he sure as hell doesn't want to be my friend."

Kort frowned down at his impeccable wool coat. Picked at some imaginary lint. "What are you on about, Gibbs. You've been his knight in shining armor these past months."

"The kid hates heroics, Kort. Not to mention cops and the military. He'd probably spit in a knight's face."

The other man smirked into his cup. "Well, there is that."

"Yeah. Your influence?"

"Not at all."

"Whose then?"

Gibbs didn't really need to know. He was just curious. Curious about what made Gray. Curious about what Kort would tell him. Curious about how civil they were going to be. Kort didn't seem at all bothered that the last time they'd seen each other they'd beaten one another to a pulp. In fact, he was unusually relaxed. Maybe his boss at the CIA was right. Maybe Kort only trusted the people he antagonized. Or maybe he'd come to the same conclusion Gibbs had - that they'd punched each other because the ones they were really after were still out of reach.

"The Caleras brainwash the children they conscript with heroics, along with narcotics. They're not a drug lord's army - they're freedom fighters, patriots." Kort waved another hand, faint disgust coming through in his tone. "Sacrifice for the cause. Death before dishonor. God and country. Rewards if you fight well and do as you're told. Punishments if you don't. You were a Marine, Gibbs. You work with Mossad." The disgust on that last was more than faint. "You know how it works."

"Marines don't recruit children. So Gray didn't buy it?"

Kort turned the cardboard cup in his hand, gaze steady on the horizon. "No. He's too intelligent to buy much of anything."

Is that what he thought it was? Intelligence? Gibbs waited, wondering if Kort would fill in any blanks. Surprisingly the man went on.

"I think he remembered enough of his life before, realized that what he was told by the cartel didn't match up with the outside world. His mother may have warned him about them." A shrug. "Or he was born suspicious. It's a part of him now, however it started."

"He trusts you."

The man glanced at him, expressionless. "In some ways. I've known him for many years, Gibbs. And I pulled him out of that hell."

Gibbs steeled himself. He wasn't sure if Kort knew that Holdner had told him more about his past than his nickname. "It's not just that. You have a similar background."

Kort was quiet for a minute. Gibbs wondered if he would deny it, or ignore him.

He didn't.

"Holdner puts too much importance on my circumstances when we met. He's grown accustomed to thinking of my background as . . . an exotic asset." Something hard passed over Kort's face. "It was an asset, in Colombia. But Gray is in a different place now. The same rules don't apply. He needs to interact with people who have normal lives. Remember what that is."

"You don't have a normal life?"

"Not particularly."

Gibbs tapped his fingers together. "Holdner seems to think you wanted another protector in place for Gray, in case you didn't come back from South Africa. I'm still not too sure what Gray expected to get out of this."

Kort didn't say anything at all. The wind felt a little colder than it had a moment ago.

He wouldn't have - but then why - ?

"Could Gray have known? That I was supposed to be . . . that you were looking for your own replacement?"

"He knew. I told him."

He told him.

 _They'll come after everyone close to you_ , the kid said. _But you already know that._

_Doesn't matter who gets killed along the way, who gets left behind._

Gibbs felt like he was about to fall off the bench. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I told him I wouldn't lie to him at the beginning. It's the only way to get anywhere with him, if you haven't noticed."

Gibbs was speechless.

"I'd no doubt you were good for it, even if he hadn't rescued you," Kort shrugged, cool and faraway. "And the informant is worth it. What does it matter now?"

Gibbs couldn't help a bitter laugh. Gray seemed to trust one guy. Kort. But Kort tried to pass him along to Gibbs so he could go off and get himself killed. No wonder the kid didn't trust them, wanted them all to piss off. No wonder Gray was willing to . . . to get himself killed, for them, in Colombia. Talk about leadership by example. 

Sure, the two of them didn't lie to Gray. But what was honesty worth to a kid in that position? He'd still be left high and dry. Left behind. Not that it was honesty that had gotten Gibbs anywhere anyway. 

"You're wrong there. Blood loss and blackmail work wonders," Gibbs muttered.

"Only if he allows them to. You don't lie to him either. . . . Or to me." So neutral Kort almost buried the surprise under it.

Gibbs shook his head. Kort needed to get it through his thick skull that the kid didn't want a replacement. And certainly not Gibbs. "He doesn't care whether I'm straight with him or not. He won't deal with me. Not willingly."

Kort was unmoved. "He came to your home when he was injured. You got his life story. I only know most of that because I was _there_ , Gibbs. What more do you want?"

Besides knowing the kid was in trouble before he got shot? Gibbs clasped his hands together. "He answered a few questions. Because he was in agony and exhausted and I interrogated him anyway."

"The kind of pain you're describing doesn't have that affect on him." Kort hunted for more lint and flicked it into the wind. "Not in an interrogation."

Because he'd been . . . trained. That only made it more horrifying.

"Well, futility does," Gibbs countered. "I told him I'd trace Cassie's cell and their car if he didn't tell me what I wanted to know. I taunted him with what I already knew about his life in Colombia. Got him to cough up a few details by threatening to find out more on my own."

Kort laughed. "Trace her cell? Come on, Gibbs."

"What?" he snapped. "She called out from my house - "

"They use black market burn phones, and replace them frequently."

That brought him up short. They were that cautious?

"The car?"

"Rental, under a false name, I'm sure, with the GPS disabled. And they vary their routes, avoid main drags and public cameras." Kort smiled, so grim it looked like a frown. "Maybe there is a way to trace them. But if it exists I don't know it."

Gibbs sat back on the bench and let his eyes drift to the horizon. Gray hadn't really been backed into a corner, then.

He'd let Gibbs in. Sort of.

Gibbs put that aside for later. That Kort couldn't trace them was disturbing. Gibbs had just assumed . . . "You don't know where to find them?"

"I know about as much as you do."

Holy shit. That couldn't be right. "That would be nothing, Kort. How do you contact them?"

Kort frowned. Tossed a questioning glance his way. "I know where they live. Their schools. But I don't track their movements."

"That's a hell of a lot more than I've got. Never tailed him."

Kort raised his eyebrows and thoughtfully sipped from his cup. Then he stood up, reaching into his pocket, handing Gibbs a little memory gadget smaller than his pinky finger. Ten weeks worth of surveillance in Colombia.

"Gray told me you knew where to find him if you needed to. That was before I left for South Africa."

Gibbs looked at him, blank.

"Maybe you know more than you think you do," Kort said wryly, and turned away.

He watched the other man walk off, mind churning. How could he - ?

Son of a bitch.

Gibbs would kill them.

* * *

  _a/n: The case that Holly mentions involving human slavery and a lot of kidnapped Chinese girls is part of Season 4's "Once a Hero," the one episode where Agent Lee got to kick ass._ _This chapter and the previous one also included some allusions to Season 7's 'Guilty Pleasures' and 'Jet Lag,' the only two episodes to feature Holly Snow. In my mind she runs a clinic - but seriously, who was she texting in 'Guilty Pleasures'? And what could have possessed her to leave halfway through dinner with Gibbs?_

 _All line stealing in this chapter is from season 6 and another excellent Kort-isode,_ "Broken Bird":

_Kort: Some day they're going to put a plaque on this bench with both our names, Gibbs._

_Gibbs: Mr. Kort. The agency's keeping you local._

_Kort: Travel is touchy at the moment. I made a few enemies overseas._

_Gibbs: What, with your winning personality?_

_Kort: When you're finally over there at charm school let me know._

_Gibbs: I need a favor._

_Kort: Gibbs. I don't like you._

_Gibbs: That's okay, I don't like you either. Not trading on kindness._

_Kort: But we are trading?_

_Gibbs: CIA aided the Mujahadeen resistance against the Soviets._

_Kort: In the eighties. I was running track at Oxford, not covert missions._

_Gibbs: Dig._

_Kort: Where?_

_Gibbs: Shaheizey refugee camp, Pakistani border, summer, 1980. Whatever you got._

_Kort: This is going to cost you, Gibbs._

_. . ._

_Kort: I hope Dr. Mallard knows how good of a friend you are to him._

_Gibbs: Two way street, Trent._

_Kort: I don't think they ever clean anything out of the archives at Langley. I had to go through a hundred boxes to find that. . . . I've opted not to call in a favor of my own. I prefer to stockpile for a rainy day._

_Gibbs: I'm good for it._

_Kort: No doubt._


	17. Joy Ride

"That is disgusting."

"And you're a broken record."

Ziva's nose went up a millimeter, the way it always did when she was about to be smarter than everyone else in the room. "Even when people actually played records that idiom made no sense. A broken record would not – "

Tony was busy, at that exact moment, stuffing the tail-end of a meatlover's-hold-the-lettuce-extra-special-sauce sandwich into his mouth. But he couldn't let an insult to the American language go. That wasn't how the David-Dinozzo game worked. 

He interrupted with a delighted, superior sigh, and took the opportunity to speak, extra disgustingly, with his mouth full. "Even in your broken recording about the broken record idiom you're a broken record. From now on, Agent David, you're Agent Da-Broken Record."

"Whatever." Ziva turned her attention back to her paperwork, superior at the very least in her ability to actually focus on work.

A squelching sound erupted from the direction of his lunch.

"Tony! If you're going to order that disgusting sandwich every Tuesday then you could at least eat it over a plate! You're splatching the requisition forms with –" her brows came together suspiciously, " – 'special sauce.'"

"Splattering," Tony mumbled, and chewed. "Or splashing. Smearing, even." He smiled helpfully, and saucy bits of excess food teetered around the edges of his mouth. "'Splatching' may be a word in some poor, backwater Eastern European language that you speak, but here in the United – "

He broke off as she dug into her pocket to answer her phone. But Ziva was still looking right at him, with her sparkling dangerous ninja eyes, daring him to keep making fun of her language skills while she spoke politely into the receiver. "This is Agent David."

Agent Da-Broken Record, Tony mouthed, and picked up a big paperclip he'd folded into a serviceable slingshot. He loaded it with a nice stretchy rubber band, grinning unrepentantly at Ziva even as he aimed the projectile at McGee. Tony may, at the moment, be teasing the woman in front of him. But Dinozzos don't do suicidal, and if Ziva decided to return fire with a rubber band, or god forfend a paperclip, he'd probably be decapitated.

Ziva stiffened and sat forward, eyes serious, and by the time the rubber band was in the air Tony had already forgotten about it. She stared at him for a long moment, still listening to her phone. Then she swiveled toward her gun drawer and took out her Sig. Tony stood up.

"Yes," Ziva said quickly, still talking into the phone. "We're on our way."

She shoved her weapon into its holster, snatched up her coat with her free hand and tore around her desk. McGee and Tony reached for their own gear and ran after her.

"Where are you?" And then Ziva ground to a halt, halfway to the elevator. "That is – Cassie, that is not wise. Tell me where you are."

Tony was at the elevator, pressing the button.

"No!" she said suddenly, to Cassie apparently, and was moving forward again. The doors slid open and they piled in, Ziva smashing the parking level button with the flat of a fist, Tony bouncing on the balls of his feet, listening to one-half of a confusing conversation. He hoped that whatever they were driving into, their usual Tuesday allotment of ammunition would be enough to handle it. But Cassie Gray calling Ziva's personal cell didn't really bode well, did it?

" . . . Alright." You'd have to know Ziva like the team knew her to hear the urgency buzzing through the bottom of that one word, like the wind would set a hire-wire humming. "I promise. None of us will. Now please tell me – "

She fell into silence, nodding to herself, listening hard. The elevator doors sprang open and the three of them burst from the metal box like daredevils shot from a cannon, sprinting as a unit for the agency cars.

"Okay, we are on our way. Stay on the line with me, Cassie," Ziva said firmly, and Tony felt a breathless laugh shake his chest. Because they were flat-out sprinting for the car now, feeling the weird charge of danger, of adrenaline in their hearts, and he was remembering that none of them were wearing vests so he broke for the trunk where they sat folded while McGee tossed the car keys to Ziva and she threw her cell phone back at the probie, and they were all feeling the weight of their guns and how puny their skins, because there was a very nasty cartel out there and Tony was pretty sure they were running full tilt right for it, and even in the face of all of that Ziva still sounded like she was up at her desk, sitting in her swivel chair, passing the afternoon watching him fling rubber bands.

They piled into the car and McGee punched the speaker button on Ziva's cell, flicking the volume up to max.

"Cassie?" Ziva called it back over her shoulder as the Charger squealed out of the Navy Yard. McGee leaned forward, pushing valiantly against the unpredictable g-force of Ziva's driving to hold the phone up between them.

There was no response. McGee grimaced as Ziva turned her eyes away from the road to face her phone. "Cassie - Cop! Talk to us!"

Ziva wove around cars dawdling toward the eastbound thruway onramp and gunned past a stop sign to merge, horn blaring, into mid-afternoon traffic. Finally she swore, a colorful barrage of language and sharp sound. Whether it was aimed at the other drivers or at her silent phone was hard to say.

"They have picked up a tail," she informed them tightly. "An aggressive one. The tail tried to force Cassie's car off the road – Tony, the flashing light – "

Tony slid down his window and reached into the glove compartment to pull out the rarely used cop-car flashy-light, slapping it onto the roof of the Charger in one smooth movement. They didn't need local leo's on their trail for what was sure to be an incident, provided they all survived, wiped clean of existence by the CIA.

"Ziva?" The girl's voice finally came through the cell phone speaker, clear and calm.

"Yes – go ahead."

"Hold on," Cassie said immediately, and was gone again.

And then . . . All quiet on the cell phone front.

Tony shifted to stare, momentarily, at Ziva's silent cell. The hell? Was the kid taking another call or what?

"Where are we going, Ziva?" he asked, perfectly pleasant.

"She said they're on 66, heading west out of the city," Ziva was driving so fast that merely talking felt like a death-defying distraction. "They're moving, obviously. We need to know where they are exactly and meet – "

"Ziva?" Cassie again.

"Yes, we're here."

"Two of our other cars say they have tails as well. That's four – "

The agents winced as a high-pitched scream came through the cell.

Not human though, it was machine, the thin wail of abused metal. And then a dull slamming sound, followed by a grunt.

"Cassie?" Ziva called sharply. "Are you alright?"

Faint, staccato Spanish. And then, incredibly . . . laughter. Young, male laughter.

That was cut off almost immediately by much louder, clearer Spanish swearing. Cassie's not-too-flattering assessment of the laughers.

"Sorry." She was back again, tense and low. "We are fine. I was saying, we think there are four tails total. I see two on us and there is one each on our other cars. They must have followed us from school."

From school? Kids in all the cars, then.

Tony already had his own cell out. He pressed the speed dial for Gibbs. "Cassie, this is Agent Dinozzo. Tell us where the other cars are and we'll have – " he paused as Ziva reached over, ninja movement a blur, and ripped his cell phone from his hand. She slammed down a thumb on the glowing red done-talking-now tab, ending the call to Gibbs. And possibly the entire working-life of that mechanism.

" - agents meet them," he finished slowly, staring at his partner as she nonchalantly tossed his phone down into the gap between her door and her seat, hopelessly out of reach even for Tony's long limbs.

He opened his mouth to say, you know, what the hell, but Ziva's momentary distraction at a hundred-and-five miles an hour had put them way too close to the car in front of them, a battered old station wagon driven by an even older blue-haired granny.

Tony and McGee clutched the handles on their doors as all three of them were thrown forward and to the left by Ziva's brake-and-swerve maneuver. Tony doubted the granny even registered the whoosh of their Charger as it swept around her.

Cassie's voice, certainly, was lost in the thrum of the engine as Ziva picked up speed again, heading toward the 66.

Tony cleared his throat, mostly to get his heart out of it, and leaned a bit toward McGee's hand, still holding Ziva's cell up between them all. "What was that?"

"I said no backup," Cassie repeated. "Just you."

Tony twisted in his seat to tell McGee to call Gibbs.

"And definitely do not call Agent Gibbs," Cassie went on, tone distracted. There was mumbling from her end, male voices in the background of the cell phone's speaker.

Tony paused to stare again at Ziva's cell, and then up at Ziva herself, who was shaking her head, lips pressed together in a disapproving line.

What had she said in the squad room?

 _Cassie, that is not wise . . . No . . . Alright . . . I promise . ._ .

Right.

"Okay. Well, Cassie, we're going to need other agents, in other cars, to handle three separate tails." He kept his voice very calm, and wondered what could have happened to make her doubt Gibbs. "You . . . look, I know you don't know me, but you can trust Gi – "

"This isn't a debate." Tony's eyebrows went up at the no-nonsense tone. The girl was channeling a school marm, or at the very least the director of an agency. "You can't tell Gibbs, and bringing in other agents just risks adding to the – "

She broke off to the distinct thumping sound of a body crashing around in the interior of a car. "Care chimba, cuidado!" she yelled. There was a confusion of noise, voices – "Cállate!"

Silence.

And then, once more into the phone," – to the leak we have obviously already got!" she hissed.

Ziva caught his look and shrugged, eyebrows up. She gestured with a spare hand to the road in front of her with a and you have a better idea? look.

"I don't know exactly where they are," she whispered. "She gave me the thruway and direction they are traveling but that was ten minutes ago! She refused to have Gibbs – "

"Look," Cassie broke in, words fast and clipped. "Gray thinks it will be smart to talk to these people, people who are trying to run us off the road, which means that both we and they need to stay alive long enough for us to talk to them. Fine. So I am calling you, not Gibbs, _you_ , for help. Okay? But Gray is not fucking well in this car and he is not the boss of me anyway and I will be just as happy to shoot out their tires and watch these motherfuckers _roast_ in a goddamn pileup," her voice was going up, anger and aggression and behind them the fear finally bleeding through, "and I do not give a damn about whatever _innocent motorists_ would fucking burn with them – "

"Alright!" Tony called. "Okay. I won't call Gibbs. Nobody is calling anyone, Cassie." God help them. Tony could see the end now. Gibbs would find out eventually, of course, and then Gibbs was going to lose his mind, and kill them all in a rage-induced blackout. "Now where are you?"

A long pause, the rev of engines on both sides of the line the only sound. "Don't ever lie to me," she said finally, voice clear and calm again, and cold.

No ma'am. "I'm not, Cassie."

No pause, this time. "We're on 66, westbound, heading toward 81 south."

"What about the other cars, Cass? You said there are two others with tails? Where are they?" He twisted around to snatch Tim's cell phone from him mid-dial, ignoring his meep of despair as Tony ended the call – the number was Abby's, he noted – and tossed it down toward his feet. Ziva grinned distractedly, swerving to an exit. Cassie said they were headed to the 81. They'd passed the merge for 81 South almost two minutes back.

"Yeah, they're headed to the 81 too." Cassie definitely sounded more collected, reassured now that she had that promise from them. "We'll join up to put the tails altogether and draw them off onto one car."

Holy hell.

"Cassie," Tony began, tone reasonable. "That's not a good idea. If you have the other cars head to the Navy Yard – "

"No," Cassie broke in, just as polite, if rushed. "We'd be cornered there, flushed out, and our contact with you would be totally exposed too. Gray thinks that is what they want and I agree. These people, whoever they are, they aren't trying to kill us. They want us to stop – to pullover. Maybe to give ourselves away. So we'll let them stop one of us in a neutral place that gives nothing away and we will get to talk to them, find out who they are, while our other cars escape them. We all get something we want. You will hang back and observe, surveillance, and come in as backup if things get hot. Okay? We are two miles out from the 81 exit," she added. "Going . . . eighty-five an hour."

The team's car had passed that sign already. They were ahead of Cassie's car then, almost to the 81 merge, the traffic around them more congested than ever.

Ziva slowed, maneuvering into one of the right-hand lanes, holding the car steady at sixty-five. After fifteen minutes near a hundred it felt like they weren't even moving.

"Yeah," Tony tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, he really did. "That's one way to look at it. Or they could be herding you together, so you'll all be in one place," for the massacre, "or they could be letting you drive out of the city so that there'll be less people around," to witness the killing spree. "At the Navy Yard we can prote -"

"Do you have one of those cop-lights on top of your car?" Cassie demanded suddenly. Her tone wasn't exactly calm anymore. It had a distinct _you assholes_ flavor to it. "Get rid of it!"

Tony sighed. If they were surveillance in this game they'd need to play it stealthy, no obvious cop stuff. He put the window down and yanked in their tell-tale flashing light. At least they weren't quite so flagrantly violating traffic laws at this stage.

"Gibbs is going to find out about this," he said, not caring if the bossy girl heard him. "And he's going to filet me."

"Yes," McGee muttered emphatically. "He's going to filet all of us. Dead."

But he'd already folded down the seat next to him and fished the bag of camera equipment out of the trunk. Cassie had mentioned surveillance. If there was one thing they'd gotten good at in the months since they'd begun stalking drug dealers it was surveillance. "You know Gibbs is – "

And at that exact moment a tinny rendition of The Lone Ranger theme song erupted from the pocket of the driver-side door, as if speaking the name of Gibbs had called down his wrath.

Tim sat back, case made. Because, obviously, they'd been flying under Boss radar for a grand total of fifteen minutes and Gibbs _already was_.

Ziva hesitated only a moment. She dug Tony's phone out from the crevice she'd stashed it in and shoved it back toward him. Lying to the boss was a very bad idea, true, but not answering a Gibbs call was an even worse one. And Tony had already promised the girl. Tony's promises were good.

Cassie said she didn't want them to tell Gibbs, Tony reminded himself, not that she didn't trust Gibbs, or that she thought he was the leak. There could be a . . . perfectly reasonable explanation for keeping him out of the loop, for the moment at least. Gibbs was known to the cartel after all. Maybe he'd somehow, inadvertently, been the source of the tail?

And anyway, Tony'd given his word to the girl for a reason. The simple truth was she knew more about the current situation than they did, and they absolutely needed her cooperation, her trust, if they were going to be able to offer any protection at all. So they'd play it by her rules, as far as they could.

Tony slumped into his seat, one eye on Cassie's black SUV, clearly visible now in the rearview mirror, and answered his phone. "Hey boss."

"Dinozzo. Where is my team."

Damn. He was already back at the Navy Yard.

"Got a tip from the Fifth District, boss, they took down one of the dirtbags in AK's crew." Tony winced. The team hadn't really bothered with AK's crew since they flipped AK. "And what with Kort's informants coming in soon we thought we'd, you know, check it out. How is Mr. Kort, anyway?"

Gibbs rolled his eyes, glancing from the lunch debris scattered over his agents' desks to the windows, where the sun shone beautifully. It was the first nice day they'd had in a week.

"Precisely, Dinozzo. The scumbags are coming in tomorrow night, I'm looking at a pile of case files that have yet to be cleared from your desk, and my entire team is out for a joyride!"

Gibbs' hearing was superb, and those were traffic noises in the background of Dinozzo's cell. Calm traffic noises – McGee must be driving, for once. "I have a meeting with Vance and Legal," Gibbs growled. Not a good day. "I don't care how late you three have to stay tonight, I want the decks cleared before you show up tomorrow, you got me?"

"Yeah, Bo – " Tony broke off, and looked at his phone. The call was over. "Gibbs says hi," he announced.

" _Leazazel_ ," Ziva swore, and now that she was only going seventy-five turned around completely to speak toward her phone. "Cassie, this is not smart. We need – "

"Holy – !"

McGee broke off when Tony grabbed the wheel. "Ziva," he nodded toward the front. "Would you please – ?"

She rolled her eyes at their stodgy American insistence on actually looking where you were going, but she did snap back around to watch the road.

"Cassie," she tried again. "Gibbs can help us – "

"There's an exit thirty miles up, for Winchester," Cassie said, ignoring them all. "Our most vulnerable two cars will go in first, then my car, then the four tails. It's a one-lane ramp with an overpass, we should be able to block them in there, with you above. If you get there first and stay down they probably won't see you. You'll have good cover. Can you find it?"

Tony drew a long, reluctant breath even as he pulled up Google Maps on his phone. It wasn't like Gibbs or any NCIS backup would be able to make it to the exit in time to help them, even if they called them now. And it didn't sound like Cassie was going to back out of this crazy plan whether Tony's team decided to play along or not. There was nothing to do but hang back and offer surveillance like the girl asked.

Tony's perfectly normal Tuesday, which he always looked forward to as two-for-one-with-special-sauce days, had turned into anything but. In fact this was a risky sandwich, right here.

"Cassie, this is . . ." _insane_ , Tony's mind supplied.

" . . . a dangerous plan," Ziva said into the gap. "If they do decide to attack we will not have enough agents or firepower to protect you. And we should call in reserve agents to at least follow your first two cars. What do you mean by vulnera – "

"They'll be fine," she said dismissively. "We're thirty miles out from the overpass, like I said. We'll try to cut our speed. Do you think you can make it in time?"

Tony sighed, staring at his tiny glowing map. "Yeah, we can make it. You're sure you'll be able to stop them in close to the bridge?" This would all be useless if Cassie's car and her pursuers didn't come to a stop in a good line of sight from the overpass.

"Yes."

Tony gave Ziva the directions. She rocketed off the thruway and out onto a county road that ran parallel to the interstate, giving them a straight shot to the bridge. He tossed a vest back to McGee and slipped on his own, wondering if Cassie's car was one of the good ones like the embassies had, with armor plating. Cass had said, when all was said and done, she would prefer to shoot out the tails' tires, so it seemed likely that she had a weapon at least. He wondered if all of the kids inside her car were armed, and how well, and if that would even be a good thing. A shooting war on a narrow exit wouldn't be good for either side.

Especially not their side though, if it was four carloads for Team Tail against just Cassie's SUV and the three NCIS agents.

Tony wondered who was driving the SUVs for Cassie's side, and if the kids really had a chance in hell of drawing all four of the tails onto Cassie's car, and why it was her car that they considered the least vulnerable target.

He wondered if any of the people in the other two cars were armed. And if Gray was in one of them. As far as he could tell Gray was always armed.

Tony took the wheel for the few seconds that Ziva needed to pull on her own vest, and then checked his pistol. "You got what you need, McGee?" McGee was the best at on-the-fly photos, hands down.

"Yeah."

Tim had taken the camera out of its case and slung it around his chest so it hung on the opposite side of his gun hand. Tony looked him over quickly, pretending to dig behind Ziva's seat for a water bottle. If anything happened to the probie while they were off playing three musketeers on Tony's watch, after he'd lied to the boss, Gibbs would –

"I'm fine, Tony," McGee smirked, and took out his gun to flick off the safety.

"Course you are, probie-san." Tony grinned back.

They were more into the country now, with little traffic compared to what they'd faced earlier. There were no obstacles before them as they roared up to the bridge and over it. Ziva ditched the car on the far side. 

The exit from the thruway ran below them, a stone rectangle with no lid. It was a narrow shooting gallery, one that would hold no escape for anyone caught there if it was blocked off with cars on either end. The bridge itself had perfect cover. Thick, waist-high concrete barricades ran along the edges, complete with a few gaps that would let them see the action below without raising their heads up into view.

Ziva knew instantly that Cassie or maybe Gray had scouted and identified this spot as an ideal place to stage an ambush. But it was Tony and the team staging the ambush, now, and Cassie caught up in it, along with whoever else was in her car.

They informed Cassie over the phone that they were at the bridge. Tony positioned them in a spread along the edge closest to the thruway. McGee was off to the side, nearest to the car, hopefully with a good camera angle. He set up in front of a pretty good crumbly hole in the barrier. Ziva was in the center, with a decent gun angle no matter where the action ended up.

Tony hunkered down to the left, farthest from the car and closest to the narrow access point that would let them scramble down into the exit, if need be, to lend the kids a hand. Ziva definitely had the best endurance of them all, but Tony was still the fastest by a long shot in a sprint.

They huddled back around Ziva's cell. Cassie stayed on to confirm that she and the other cars had joined up, and that they were closing in on the exit, three miles out. Then two miles. There were increasingly aggressive driving noises from the background of the cell, the SUV and its pursuers traveling too fast, jockeying for position on the road. It was a hell of a lot scarier to listen to on the bridge than it had been in the car, now that the team was totally still, sitting safe and helpless around the phone.

The noise got rougher, louder, more violent. And then Cassie informed them that they were close, that she was going to hang up. Tim and Tony sprinted back to their positions. Ziva set the phone to vibrate and shoved it into a pocket. She steadied her gun next to a peephole that offered her a clear view up the exit, and she took a breath. She needed to kick away her fury at whoever was chasing these children, and all the uncertainty about the plan. Those were indulgences, distractions. She needed to focus on keeping the team and the kids coming toward them safe – as safe as they could be. She breathed calmly, deeply, and diverted her attention away from her outrage, back to her physical senses, and her training.

She twisted to check their own six, but there were no other cars on this lonely squat bridge, no lurkers in the trees behind Tony or Tim, so she settled down and gazed, as they did now, toward the turnoff to the exit. A red Prius coasted through below them, and then a silver pick-up. Almost a minute passed with no traffic at all.

And then an enormous black SUV swerved onto the exit, two more following behind it, close and fast. Just beyond them a dark sedan popped into view, so tight to the car in front of it that its nose almost looked wedged under the SUV's bumper. Three more sedans followed on its heels.

The lead vehicle ate up the ground, its heavy structure looking like it went airborne as it rocketed over a sudden drop in the road, its suspension smashing in on itself as it landed. The second and the third did the same, in quick succession. The shaking cars didn't lose an ounce of speed as they roared toward the bridge.

McGee's eyes widened when the third SUV approached, close on the heels of the other two. That last one was supposed to be Cassie's car, but it didn't look like it was slowing down -

Only sixty yards out now, if that, the lead sedan just a few yards behind. They must be going a hundred, more than that – Forty yards. Finally the first SUV was under them, disappearing with an angry growl through the tunnel formed by the bridge. The second roared through a moment later and was gone. There was more distance between the second and the third, but only a little. Thirty-five yards. They weren't going to stop in time –

And then the tires squealed, and the front of the SUV lurched violently to the left, the entire car banking heavily forward. The turn seemed to play out in slow-motion, the heavy frame leaning dangerously to its right side, still traveling eighty miles an hour, thick wheels fighting the road, fighting to slow even as the body of the car rushed forward, and every muscle in Tim's body seized as he waited for it to flip.

But it didn't. Instead of rolling, the big car began to skid diagonally across the asphalt. It scraped a back corner against the old stone blocks of the walls leading up to the underpass, throwing up a shower of sparks.

The sedans smashed down their own brakes and fishtailed, tires smoking. The agents on the bridge watched as the first in line managed to stay in the center of the road, and back just far enough to avoid the sliding, wildly braking SUV in front of them. But the second and third sedans were caught off-guard, forced to brake even harder. Their tires seized, and for a few moments the drivers had no control. The cars drifted gently into the concrete leaders designed to funnel traffic under the bridge. Their driver's side fenders crumpled like aluminum foil before the cars managed to jerk back toward the center of the road.

The SUV's diagonal became a complete horizontal as it jerked to a sudden stop just before the bridge. It stretched greedily across the road, driver's side closest to the pursuing cars. There would be no way to get past it on that narrow exit, not without a motorcycle or a tank. Whoever was in the first two SUVs, they were safe now.

The four sedans littered the road, but it looked like everyone had survived without a pileup, miraculously. And the SUV almost directly below Tony was a good one. A huge, purring engine. Armored. With any luck that glass was bulletproof.

Good girl, Cassie, he thought. That's good –

And then the passenger door slipped open, almost directly below Tony, and a girl who must have been Cassie slid out. No, Tony mouthed. But he stayed silent, and raised his gun.

She was mostly hidden by the tall vehicle where she was, but she stepped forward, until her upper body was visible over the hood of the car.

She waited there. Low in her left hand, out of sight to anyone but the agents watching from above, she carried some kind of weapon. A stubby, lightweight assault rifle.

There was silence, utter stillness for a split-second, and then the front doors of the four sedans were thrown open and agents piled out to take cover behind them, four cars, eight agents, eight pistols aimed at Cassie's head.

The coordinated movement was familiar, engrained in his own body's memory, and that's when Tony's eyes went to the license plates, and he recognized the sedans, finally, as FBI cars.

* * *

  _a/n: I've once again attempted to insert some Spanish dialogue and Colombian swearing into this story, with only Google Translate and lists of dirty words from the Internet to light my monolingual way. Apologies to the language, and if any readers have corrections to offer I'd be most obliged! In the meantime, a glossary:_

_Care chimba, cuidado: Bastard, watch out._

_Cállate!: Shut-up!_


	18. The Federal Bureau of %$#*!

The FBI.

Tony searched the faces below him, stupid and frantic, for Fornell. For Sacks, or even Dargas. For anyone, really, he could recognize, and make sense of. But he didn't know a single one of them.

Why were uninvolved agents chasing around cars full of kids? 

What had Cassie said - ? 

 _These people, whoever they are, they aren't trying to kill us. . . ._ _They want us to stop. To pullover . . ._

Well, hell, Tony thought. She'd known it was law enforcement!

 _To flush us out_ _. . add to the leak we've obviously already got._

Dirty law enforcement, working with the cartel? Or were the agents below him just confused?  Confused or not, that chase had been fierce, and now their aim was steady - and what grounds did NCIS even have to - ? 

Fucking hell. That's why she'd waited to tell Gibbs' team where the cars were, waited until it was too late to call in backup. Because what good would NCIS back-up be? Who knew, now, what other Feds knew, or what they thought they did, and which ones would be on the kids' side? The situation below them was _civilian_ , not military. The law would be on the FBI's side.

McGee realized the same thing, at the exact same moment, through the viewfinder of his camera. Who the pursuers were, and what it meant. He kept snapping anyway. From his position he had good face shots of the agents crouched behind car doors below him.

There was movement at one of the backdoors of the lead sedan and McGee focused there, getting a picture of the man climbing out of the car before his eyes had even registered the face. The man was wearing a dark suit, and the face was familiar, McGee thought, from somewhere –

The man stepped casually around the FBI agent in front of him, around the open door, and moved forward a pace or two. His movements were elegant, relaxed and slow, gun concealed in a holster at his waist.

And then he smiled, and brushed the hair back from his eyes. Blue eyes. It was Declan O'Donnell.

McGee let the camera slip from his fingers and eased out his pistol. He steadied a shoulder against the concrete and sighted carefully down the barrel, until he was locked on the bridge of O'Donnell's nose, on the narrow bit right between the eyes. 

And then he waited, and willed the man to make a move.

"Cóptero." O'Donnell was twenty, maybe thirty feet from Cassie, max. "¿Es realmente usted?"

She stared.

He put his hands in his pockets and ducked his head, still grinning. But the voice, when it came, was warm and sincere. "I can't believe it. You're alive after all." One of his hands came up a bit, but not to his gun. To his heart. "How wonderful."

The Irish accent was faint now, but still there somewhere. A lilt sliding just under the words.

"Diablo." Cassie actually sounded as young as she was. "You are a long way from home."

"Oh, child," O'Donnell said softly. "Home is where the heart is." He came forward another half-step. Above him three agents adjusted their aim. "No hug for your old man, Cop?"

It was a cold day, even with the bright sun. The stressed engines of the cars popped and sighed mechanically. The only sound, for long seconds, in that echoing exit.

" . . . Is my father here?"

"Now that hurts." O'Donnell shook his head sadly. "Is your mother still telling you those spiteful lies?"

Stillness as the agents on both sides watched, and listened.

"What do you want?" Cassie's voice low, holding onto steady by a thread.

"So many things. Too many to explain here. But you should know that I've been working with the FBI," the words slow and serious, full of kindness. "They've offered me their protection while in the United States, you see. And do you know, it came to my attention that Daniel is here, and so Sean must be too, of course. I'd very much like to see them again."

A long pause, but Cassie was silent.

"Such a sad situation," O'Donnell went on. "Running from your home - that is no life for a child. I want to offer my assistance. I thought I'd meet them after school."

O'Donnell cocked his head, scanning the bridge above him, eyes sweeping over its shadowy chinks. Tony readjusted his grip on the familiar, friendly weight of the gun in his hands. The man knew someone was up on the bridge, or suspected. But he probably didn't know who. Or how many.

"I don't suppose Sean is hiding around here, somewhere? In the car, maybe? Or Daniel? I recall he could be . . . shy, on occasion."

Silence.

"Nothing to say?"

"I don't know anyone by those names. _Diablo_."

O'Donnell sighed. "They belong with their families, _Natalia_. You all do. You don't have to run anymore," he nodded back toward the agents behind him. "You will be offered forgiveness, protection too. I can take you home. We can end this."

Silence.

"Well. Think about it girl, alright? I'll be around Washington for the next day or so, if you want to talk, and then it's back to work I'm afraid. But you can always call – " O'Donnell stepped forward, extending a card.

"You stay back." All of Cassie's youth, the unsteadiness, had been sucked away. The agents heard fear tempered into anger, into steel. Just the sound of it seemed to sharpen Ziva's vision. She could see the stray hairs in the crease between the man's eyebrows. Where her bullet would carve its path, when she shot the monster.

O'Donnell pulled up, surprised. "Alright. Of course. Well," he put the card back in his pocket, "it's just the information for one of my contacts at the FBI - they'll be able to put you in touch with me, if you would ever like to talk. But you can find him on your own I'm sure. The name is Arena - Agent Arena."

He continued to look at her, waiting patiently, but she said nothing.

O'Donnell pulled back slowly, started to turn away. Hesitated. "I am sorry about all of this, child," he gestured toward the cars littered behind him. And then he smiled again. "But it's so very good to see you. Remember to tell Daniel I say hello, would you?"

He strolled back to the lead sedan and got in. The agents at the doors of the first car straightened cautiously, guns still trained on the strange half-hidden girl in front of them.

"You'll need to clear that vehicle off the road, miss," one said finally. His pistol was steady in his hands, aimed at her chest. Treating Cassie and the SUV as a threat, if a relatively mild one.

"Yes, sir." Cass retreated back to the car's passenger door, assault rifle tucked down at her side, and climbed in.

The SUV peeled away instantly. McGee snatched up the camera at his knees, taking photos of the agents below them as they stood up from their cover, before they too got into their cars.

The first two sedans drove off at a leisurely pace this time, no longer trying to follow Cassie's car. They were trailed by the two sedans with busted up fenders. Those just managed to limp slowly under the bridge and to the end of the exit, no doubt heading to the nearest mechanic.

When the last car had disappeared around the far turn of the exit McGee and Tony popped up and trotted over to Ziva.

She had already pulled out her phone and dialed, but looked up as they came close and shook her head. "No answer."

"Come on," Tony urged, "Let's go."

He slid into the driver's seat this time, Ziva dialing again as she ran for the car. "Her phone is off."

McGee strapped himself in as Tony gunned toward the thruway. "That could be – that's not necessarily bad, is it? If they were still being followed she would call you, right?"

Ziva held her phone tightly, gazing out the window at the stark winter landscape and the cars speeding by. "They are hunted by the Calera cartel, McGee. And that madman. Now the FBI . . . "

"I know. And I've never been so glad that after all our searches we never found a trace of those kids. They know how to protect themselves, how to hide. And they know how to find us, if they need to."

Ziva nodded reluctantly, and set her phone aside. She would try again later.

The three of them were quiet for a moment, the silence under the engine thick as Tony set them on 81 north, speeding back to DC.

"We need to call Gibbs," McGee said finally, eyeing Ziva's phone. His own was still lying somewhere under the dash. "We should probably call Vance."

"Not yet, McGee." Ziva zipped her cell into the pocket of her jacket, as if to seal it away from temptation. "We need to think this through."

"That was Declan – !"

"Yeah, think we all got who he was." Tony reached down into the divider between the seats, coming up a moment later with his sunglasses. The sun was an orange disk hanging low in the sky off to the left, shining into the driver's side window as it raced toward the horizon. "At the moment I'm more worried about his escort."

Tim took a moment to push away the revulsion, the shock of seeing O'Donnell - "Working with the FBI. Weird that Kort wouldn't know – "

"No," Ziva said flatly. "It is impossible that Kort would not know. Or Gibbs, he has contacts there as well. Both of them have kept a careful eye on inter-agency traffic regarding cartels. And that man in particular," she muttered.

"You think the two of them were deliberately kept in the dark about an operation involving O'Donnell?" McGee frowned.

Tony raised his eyebrows.

"Alright. The cartel's had Gibbs pegged since Abby's report linked him to the assassinations in 92. But the CIA?" Tim wondered. "That would mean they've identified Kort too . . ." And had the sheer clout at the FBI to keep this not only from him, but from his boss over there. From all indications, Kort's boss was a powerful man.

"Yep," Tony said idly. "CIA falling down on the job. Alarming. But we have bigger problems. The fact that O'Donnell not only found Gray and Cass but has been hooked up with the FBI – "

Ziva nodded emphatically.

" – and is running around town not only free but armed, and at the command of his very own gunslinging, Fed-approved, motorist-harrassing caravan . . . that is - " terrifying, wrong, and very, very bad " - weird," Tony concluded. "Too weird."

Well, not all that weird, Tim thought. He fidgeted in his seat, glancing between the partners sitting stiffly in front of him. They did have an idea, now, about why O'Donnell was here.

Were they not going to bring it up?

Maybe they just weren't surprised.

"Did you already know?" he said quietly. "That he's - that she's his - "

"That man is almost certainly a pathological liar, McGee," Ziva said sharply. "We cannot trust anything he says."

Apparently Ziva didn't want to talk about it.

"She didn't deny it," Tony said flatly. "Didn't seem surprised either."

"It is useless to speculate. And it is irrelevant in any case."

McGee snorted. Irrelevant? Legally it was a trump card. "If he finds her, and can prove it? What if he is working with the FBI, and can also prove she's not a citizen? If it's a custody issue and he has cartel lawyers he could have her sent back to Colombia so fa -"

The words caught in Tim's throat as Ziva turned calmly in her seat to face him. She stared at Tim in a strange, detached way, one he'd never seen from her before.

And he realized, with a cold feeling in his gut, that the person he was looking at was someone he didn't know.

"Then we had better make sure he doesn't find her, McGee."

He nodded.

So they weren't going to talk about that.

There were plenty of other topics to cover.

"They can't know who he is - the FBI. We need to warn them - Gibbs and Kort, and Fornell, Vance - "

"And everyone else," Ziva agreed. Her voice was terse, and she sat motionless, almost hunched in her seat. She looked . . . like the Mossad operative who had first joined their team five years ago. Emotionless. Focused. Dangerous. "But if the cartel has gained access to even the slightest part of the FBI's surveillance network - " she shook her head. "It is probably safer not to make any of the warnings over the phone. We do not know how deep this goes, McGee."

"Right," Tim frowned.

He wasn't used to thinking suspiciously of another agency. But if the FBI was neutral, or if a unit was being manipulated by the cartel . . . good thing those kids were so good at hiding. How were they found? Cassie seemed to think it was a leak. They'd have to ask them about their movements, contacts . . . course with FBI surveillance in place, whoever they contacted . . . maybe why Cassie turned off her phone. Smart . . . hell, if the FBI just knew about the connection between the team and the cartel . . . oh.

Uh oh.

McGee lurched forward. "Give me your phones."

Ziva and Tony glanced at each other and tossed dubious looks back at McGee.

"Give me your phones," he insisted. "Now! The FBI can bug them remotely!"

"Chill, McGee," Tony said. "I'm hiding from Gibbs. My phone isn't even on."

But Ziva had heard of remote bugging, and was already passing hers back. Tim flipped it over and popped the battery out. "They can turn them on, Tony," he said, "Use them to track us - they can listen to anything we say, whether we're making a call or not. They could be listening to us right now - "

"McGee," Tony laughed disbelievingly. And then slapped at Tim's hand as it crept up toward the driver's side door of the car, where Tony's phone was still stashed in a side pocket. "Hey! Hands off!"

"A little time away will be good for you -" McGee dodged, feinted, and tried to use his other hand to make a sneak attack " - your attachment to that thing is unhealthy - " a wriggle, an aggressive slither - and finally he grasped it, triumphant.

"Now hand little Penelope over," he smirked, and tugged her away.

"The Federal Bureau of Big Brother has violated Penelope. Is that what you're saying to me?" This was really shaping up to be a very bad day.

"I'll take good care of her, Tony."

That wasn't the point. Some things are sacred. His phone was personal. That was Tony's phone.

Gibbs was going to grind this cartel into dust, and probably kick some big fat FBI ass along the way, and Tony was going to be his happy wingman.

And then he was going to get Penelope back from probie's sticky little fingers. Until then - he'd just have to kick enough FBI ass to make up for it.

"Alright, so we'll talk to the team in person," he sighed. "Or by carrier pigeon I guess. But call Abby before you gut your cell, probie – Ziva, toss him his phone. Just keep it vague, tell her to stay late, that we're coming in with pictures for her."

Tony leaned forward a bit to check his blind spot as he swerved into rush hour traffic on the 66. "And possibly with my own autopsy results," he muttered, "once I explain to Gibbs where we really were today."

**x**

But when they got to the Navy Yard it was 1810 and Gibbs, bizarrely, was already gone.

McGee ran the photos down to Abby's lab for identification, to be processed only after they swept the entire room, the bullpen, and every piece of equipment they ever used from top to bottom for bugs.

McGee promised to stay near a landline, and rolled his eyes when Tony suggestively asked if he'd be willing to escort Abby home at the end of the evening. Then Tony and Ziva headed for Gibbs' house – but not before Tony took a few extra seconds to get an empty box from a supply closet and fill it with all of the unsightly, lingering case files from their desks.

Gibbs had said to clear the decks, after all, and Gibbs did not accept excuses.

* * *

 

_a/n: for my latest stab at Spanish:_

_Cóptero. ¿Es realmente usted?: Copter. Is that really you?_


	19. Agent Gibbs?

What Tony told him was bullshit, of course. Gibbs knew his team wasn't following up on local LEO tips about AK. But whatever they were doing . . . they could probably handle it.

Most likely.

"Agent Gibbs? Sir?"

Silence. 

"Are we boring you, Gibbs?"

Gibbs shifted, straightened his suit jacket, refocused his eyes. Vance's irritated face came into view first.

"No." They'd passed bored about a hundred miles back. If Gibbs had actually been paying attention for the last forty-five minutes he'd be catatonic by now.

Vance turned to the fresh-faced lawyer sitting next to him, smiling politely. "Thank you, Ms. Owen. I think we can take it from here."

She nodded, gathered her papers and walked out. Gibbs watched her go, trying to put his finger on what was weird about her. And finally realized that Agent Lee used to wear that exact same suit.

"The point of combining my meeting with yours was to save you the time of meeting with the legal department separately later."

"Yeah. Thanks."

The director shot him a disgruntled look. Gibbs returned it with interest. He was perfectly aware that he hadn't sounded sincere. He was also aware that it was Vance who insisted on these meetings in the first place. He could have just signed the form –

"Not much point if you sleep through it," Vance grumbled. He got up and walked toward his desk.

"Wasn't sleeping – "

"Damn well better not. Before you turn our holding cells into your own personal Gitmo it would be prudent – "

"It's not even my – "

" _Prudent_ ," the director steamrolled over him easily, even with his head down, rooting through one of his massive desk drawers, "to review the legalities regarding an unorthodox - one might say _murky_ \- use of federal resources."

Leon seized the reserve stash of toothpicks from where they'd been buried under a pile of pens and returned to the conference table. He'd already chewed through the ones he stuck in his coat pockets that morning.

"Unprecedented, that's what it is," he muttered.

"Yeah. Got that the first time the first lawyer said it."

Vance nodded. If any of this ever came to light, just the fact that they'd met with the agency's counsel and been up front about it all would probably save their careers. But that didn't make two hours of policy review any more fun.

He checked his watch. It was only 1700, felt like midnight. He'd long suspected that meetings like that one warped space-time. "Everything else set?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Team needs to go over security for transport from the airport to the Navy Yard. We can do that tomorrow." Cutting it a little close for an arrival scheduled late tomorrow night, but keeping the informant and his minions alive was Kort's job, anyway. Gibbs wasn't all that fussed about it. "We'll start sorting through the surveillance from the Special-Ops team. Need to figure out a strategy for the interviews." And for after. "Going to be a lot of information to go through."

"How's the team holding up?"

Gibbs thought back to the quiet afternoon he'd enjoyed in the bullpen. Suspiciously quiet. "Fine," he said drily.

They hadn't called. No call meant no serious trouble. But truthfully they'd been antsy over the past few weeks. He'd been working them hard, getting everything else out of the way before they dug into the cartel. And while his people didn't generally admit to being uneasy, Gibbs could tell that they were. Quietly uneasy about the informant coming in, and Gray too, observing the interviews. Uneasy about the uncertain path looming in front of them. Taking them right for the cartel.

On top of that - well. At least one of them had been giving him the runaround. Him. Gibbs.

He'd make them rue the day.

**x**

The bullpen was still quiet when he left Vance's office, his team's stuff still where it was whenever they'd blown out of there mid-lunch.

For once, though, it didn't really matter that they'd spent the afternoon playing hooky, chasing around whatever nutty lead they'd come up with to get out from under the paperwork. There was no hot case - only the cartel on the horizon, and forms and filing in the meantime.

Unfortunately for the NCIS archiving staff, his people just weren't the sort to be real inspired by paperwork. Gibbs could relate to that. But he'd put in his time and now his desk, at least, was pristine like it hardly ever was.

He took the elevator down to Abby's lab to say goodnight and headed for the door. Checking out at 1730 on a Tuesday. It was practically a record.

Maybe he'd finally finish the design he was working on for Mike.

**x**

There was leftover pizza from the weekend.

Gibbs ate it standing at the counter in the kitchen, thinking about the sketches he'd made over the past month, filling all of his few free moments. The design becoming more elaborate the more he fiddled with it, and accepted it.

The basic elements were obvious. Already had the oak frame half built, and that part felt solid. Right.

Couldn't let it be just a box, though. Mike was a simple guy, sure, but his life hadn't been plain. So the eagle and anchor over the globe would go on the front, and Gibbs had already sketched that out. But that didn't look exactly right either. Too stoic, Dinozzo would say. Too straight. Mike wasn't like that. He'd always been wild, a cowboy.

That was how Gibbs met him, really. Screw the system. Screw the law, if it didn't seem right to Mike.

Gibbs looked out the window. It'd been twilight when he left the Navy Yard, but it was dark out now. All he could see in the glass was the blank, black night, and a little of his own reflection. A patch of white down in the corner – snow sitting on his neighbor's bushes, catching the kitchen light.

It would be warm in Mexico now. Beautiful at dinnertime, down by the water, peaceful and sunny. Cold beers and the grill out, Amira running around, laughing. Flowers in bloom, even in February . . .

Flowers on the beach, these days. Gibbs grinned. Last time he was down there Mike told him how Leila ordered some flowering desert vine through an old plant catalog she found at the library. The pots got shipped through the mail, right down to the cantina, and Mike had known it was futile, but just to satisfy her stubborn, woman's insistence, he and Amira had planted them. Put them in next to the porch.

And somehow those flowers took. Tough and wild, happy even in the sandy soil. Damnedest thing, he'd said. Never thought anything would grow there.

And Mike had smiled, proud.

Flower decal around the edges . . . ? Gibbs had done vines before. He'd just need to find the name of the flower and a picture. From Leila maybe . . . have to sketch out the dimensions first, see what he'd need in terms of material.

He rinsed his hands and flicked on the basement light, the image still vivid in his head. Sand and the water, Mike and his family, flowers in the sun.

Gibbs didn't see him until he'd jogged two-thirds of the way down the steps, when his own line of sight cleared the basement ceiling. A still figure with a gun, standing by the workbench.

Gibbs stopped. He could tell from his peripheral vision that the pistol was trained on him, had followed his movement down the stairs. But whoever was holding it didn't fire. 

Gibbs turned to face him.

It was a kid. Dark hair, fierce dark eyes. A pale, whip-thin body, the arm and shoulder holding the gun turned deliberately toward Gibbs while the rest of him disappeared from view.

Not the steadiest grip in the world, one-handed like that. But the kid did present a very small target. From where Gibbs was standing he looked barely wider than the pistol he held.

They stood and stared at each other for a few seconds, the gun wavering very slightly, Gibbs motionless.

"You alone?" the kid said.

"Yes," Gibbs answered.

And with that the kid lowered the pistol.

Gibbs followed the motion warily. "You expecting someone else?"

"Anybody could walk in this place. You got no locks!"

Gibbs considered retreating back up the stairs.

He walked, slow and deliberate, down the rest of them instead.

Truth was he had plenty of locks. His Sig was locked away in the safe upstairs. His rifle was locked up behind the kid. And Gibbs wasn't carrying a weapon at all.

Not that he would really need one, if he could get in close. The boy was thirteen, maybe, and built like a pipe cleaner.

He glanced at the counter against the far wall, but it didn't look like the shelf holding his rifle had been tampered with. The kid watched him carefully, face hard, the lowered gun still steady in his hand.

"So you just decided to walk in?" Gibbs kept the tone easy. "You come down here to steal my TV?" He nodded toward the battered old set perched on a shelf.

The kid glanced between Gibbs and the television doubtfully. "That thing works?"

Not so well these days, actually, since digital took over the airwaves. Gibbs stepped a little closer. The kid had the good sense to look cautious, wide eyes fixed on the man approaching him. But he didn't back up, or even raise the gun.

"Well, if not for my TV, why are you here?"

"You're Agent Gibbs, yeah?"

The boy started to edge away then, movement nervous, and Gibbs paused before he really spooked him.

The kid kept talking. "Safe here as anywhere, Gray said, till they find him."

Gibbs looked the boy over again, not in the least surprised. "You're with Gray."

"Yeah."

"And where is Gray?"

"Tracking." Impatient. "Like I said."

"Right." Gibbs kept it relaxed, calm like a summer day. "Tracking who?"

Gibbs froze as the boy pulled the gun up, but the kid pulled the weapon in, cradled it close against his own body, as if to remind himself that it was there. And then he turned to face Gibbs full-on, and Gibbs blinked.

"Diablo. He's here."

When Gibbs didn't say anything the kid kept on forcefully, holding onto calm like a wild animal was trying to throw him, terror underneath suddenly obvious. "He found us. He's here. Tried to follow us home from school."

Gibbs took a moment to absorb that.

Diablo. In DC. At their school.

"Gray left you here?"

The kid nodded.

"Alone?"

The boy shook his head and gestured to the far wall, and Gibbs turned a bit to look.

The cot had been set against the blind spot under the stairs. There were four more kids piled on it. Young. An eight-year-old girl, if that. A boy and another girl, maybe ten or eleven.

Gibbs stared at them, and they, utterly still, stared back. He returned his gaze to what was apparently the senior kid.

No way.

"Anyone else?"

"Three forward on the roof, two out back."

That took a second. "Gray left lookouts on my roof?"

A nod.

"They're armed?"

An enthusiastic nod.

"Anything else?"

"Ditch your phones, Diablo's got Feds," the kid recited. "If you have to call out, use the landline." He gestured toward the bench. Gibbs' portable phone was sitting on it. "Said to do what you say. That they'd be back soon as they could. And he said - " the kid frowned, and glanced toward the project slowly taking shape on the table in the middle of the room. "He said that's not a hot tub."

That was it. Phones. Feds. Not a hot tub.

Gibbs considered the kid in front of him, and then the little ones behind him, thinking it through. Gray had stashed kids in his basement. But the cartel knew where Gibbs lived. Why use his house?

If Diablo found Gray, had he found Kort as well? Gray must be desperate. No place safe . . . _Daiblo's got Feds_.

A lot of agents knew who Gibbs was, at least. Would think twice before moving against him. And Gibbs knew every last agent trick in the -

Ah. Clever kid. Pitting his own Feds against the cartel's.

And hunting the threat. To draw it off? Away from the kids here? That part, not so clever. If anyone should be tracking down any member of that cartel, it was law enforcement. Meaning Gibbs.

Assuming Gray survived they would discuss that - again - later. But first things first. Gibbs was apparently on Rule 44 duty. He dug his cell out of his pocket and popped the battery out of the back, placing the two pieces on the bench next to the portable landline. The boy moved a little closer to his side, watching his movements silently.

"You said he's gone to track down Diablo?" Gibbs asked. "You're sure?"

The kid seemed to calm a bit, grounded just by talking to Gibbs. "Yeah. They'll get him . . . " The boy was reassuring himself. " . . . Gray and Cop and them."

And them. At least the two Gibbs knew weren't out there alone.

Gibbs dug out a scrap of paper and a pencil and started scrolling through the numbers saved in the portable phone, scribbling down the most useful ones. "What's your name?"

"Hook."

Gibbs' eyes drifted from the phone to the kid's right shoulder, where his arm ended above the elbow. "Seriously?"

The kid shrugged. Actually grinned a little.

Didn't any of them –? "Kid," Gibbs sighed, "what is your _name_."

A pause.

_Said to do what you say . . ._

"Alex."

Gibbs shoved the paper into a pocket and pointed at the entire group as he headed back toward the stairs. "Stay. And I'm going to let you keep that pistol for now, Alex," the kid was still hugging it, "but only if you put the safety on and promise not to shoot anyone with it."

He jogged up the stairs, strapped on his Sig and both his backups, and loaded up with extra ammunition. Drew all the curtains closed and went back downstairs to pull out his rifle.

Alex settled on the floor by the cot, silent with the others as they watched Gibbs load the long weapon and set it on the table next to him. Finally Gibbs sat down on the stool at the bench and focused on the kids again. The younger ones were still bundled up in their winter coats. He never really bothered to heat the basement.

"How long have you guys been here?"

"Few hours," Alex again. "It was after we left school we noticed the tail, and then when we ditched them we came right here."

Gibbs looked them over. He'd changed when he first got home, and been upstairs in the kitchen for awhile without hearing a peep. "Everyone okay? Need the bathroom? Something to eat?"

They shook their heads.

Gibbs got up and adjusted the thermostat. 

He needed to call his team. But he wasn't about to call his people on phones that might be tapped. So he needed to get McGee in to sweep his house for bugs. He also needed to head into the Navy Yard so that he could start looking for Diablo. Needed to find him before Gray did. If the guy had a federal escort and the kid went for him anyway . . .

Communications from MTAC would be perfectly secure. But he wasn't about to go into the Navy Yard and leave the children here alone, or take them with him either, since Gray seemed to think they were safer here than anywhere else.

And if Diablo had actually bought agents with access to the Navy Yard, that was probably true. A house would be easier to defend, simpler. Just kill anyone trying to get in who wasn't Gibbs.

"So what is it?" Alex said.

"Hm?"

One of the other kids pointed to the half-finished wood project.

"Nothing yet, isn't finished. Listen, Alex, I want you to tell me everything that's happened from the time you left school today to the time I came down here."

Alex was an excellent storyteller. He was about ten minutes into an exciting rendition of events when two soft, rapid thumps interrupted from the window behind him. Gibbs was up instantly, gun trained on the source of the noise.

"People here," Alex whispered. "Two you know."

Lookouts on the roof. Right.

He wondered what the signal would be if someone they didn't recognize as a friendly approached the house. If there would be a signal, or just a body.

Gibbs held a finger to his lips anyway, gesturing for the kids to stay where they were. He ran lightly up the stairs.

The front door was just opening, unusually quiet. Whoever was coming in was doing it cautiously.

Gibbs approached the same way, hugging the wall in the kitchen, easing around the divide.

It was Dinozzo, Ziva right behind him, faces set in tense lines as they silently began to clear Gibbs' house.

**x**

They both saw him at the same moment and straightened, relieved.

"Boss." Dinozzo holstered his gun, watching with some surprise as Gibbs did the same. "You know?"

"Know what?"

Gibbs turned and led them into the dining area, away from the big front windows.

"Declan O'Donnell is in the country," Ziva said. "In DC. He seems to know who Cassie is and where she goes to school, and he has somehow allied himself with the FBI."

Gibbs nodded. "Where's McGee?"

Ziva and Tony exchanged looks. The boss already knew.

"We got photos of O'Donnell and the agents he was with. Abby and McGee are checking their computers for bugs before they run them. If this guy's infiltrated the FBI his surveillance capabilities are - "

Gibbs headed for the basement. "Stay here. And don't shoot anyone without my express permission."

They frowned after him as he trotted back down the stairs.

Gibbs grabbed the phone and dialed MTAC. A few minutes later McGee was on his way to Gibbs' house, photos and a pile of bug detection equipment in tow. A guard stayed with Abby as she checked the NCIS computers before running the digital photo IDs. It wasn't like she would be venturing home that night anyway. Too much to do.

Gibbs turned to the kids watching him. "Will the lookouts know who Agent McGee is?"

Alex nodded. "He's on your team."

Yeah. But as far as Gibbs knew only Gray had actually clapped eyes on McGee.

"You're sure they'll recognize him?"

"Timothy McGee, 32. Tall, white, brown hair, green eyes, armed, knows computers, navy bases, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Silver Spring, Norfolk, Gibbs' team. Pictures in the file," Alex paused. "Looks like a geek."

Alright then.

**x**

Gibbs ordered the Party Deluxe spread from the local Chinese place and put it on the agency card. He asked the kids if they wanted to go upstairs - the ground floor would be the least safe, but there was a bathroom and a comfortable bedroom on the second floor. Alex said that Gray told them to stay in the basement, and that was the end of that.

Gibbs moved his tools off of one end of his worktable so they'd have a place to eat. Then he grabbed the phone and his rifle and went upstairs to deal with his agents.

* * *

 

 _a/n: Rule 44, from "Patriot Down": First things first. Hide the women and children_.


	20. Tripwire

Occasionally, through the course of his days, Gibbs would find himself thinking about Gray, and Cassie. The little hints he'd gotten of the rest of them.

About how hard it was to gain their trust, like moving a mountain one pebble at a time. He didn't know if he would ever get there.

But among those they truly accepted into their world, between each other . . . what he had seen was evidence of an unbelievable team. A family - not in blood, in the true sense of the word - unbreakable devotion, unconditional love. His team had recognized it. A family built from ashes, on the bond that came from fighting together to survive. Learning to pull each other through all the shit the world could throw at them.

Now O'Donnell was here, had the gall to step foot in his agents' territory. To threaten a group of kids Gibbs' team barely knew, but had come to admire, and to recognize as their own, in a way. The urge now to lay themselves down, to fling themselves into O'Donnell's path - it was tearing Tony and Ziva up, he could smell it on them. To hell with the law, to hell with their jobs, with the team, even. They wanted revenge. To punish for all the bodies pulled from the fires at Camp Six, and the dead faces still haunting Dinozzo's dreams. For Ziva singled out yet again, captured and attacked. She wanted that power back. For the scars on Cassie's face, and the black sweep of Gray's past, the horror that had made him what he was - taken from him terribly, and forever. It was more than enough to make his team want to kill. More than enough to forget any reason not to. 

But first, they had to get out of Gibbs' house. It had finally dawned on them that he had no intention of going anywhere, and it was pissing them off. 

When McGee arrived, Gibbs climbed back up the stairs. 

"Gibbs." Ziva dug in the moment Gibbs reappeared. "We need to get to MTAC - "

"Not yet."

The tone froze them all. And they noticed, finally, that he was armed to the teeth. He leaned the rifle against the wall of the dining room, close to hand, and passed the portable phone to his tech expert without a word. Then he sat in the chair facing the kitchen and snapped his fingers for the other two to join him around the table. 

McGee swept the immediate area for bugs and took apart the phone with lightening speed. 

Gibbs assessed his people.

Dinozzo was too quiet. And not looking to Gibbs, not the way he normally would. Tony was staring away from them all tonight, focus out the window, one finger tapping lightly, soundlessly on the table. His face was arranged in paper-thin calm - a distant man fighting a private war. It was Tony circa Ziva's disappearance in Somalia, trying to figure out where everything had gone wrong. Wondering how to grope forward. Regretting every second of inaction as it slipped away from him, feeling it like blood loss from a wound.

Across the table, Ziva looked alert, but Gibbs doubted she was really seeing any of them right now. She was hunting in her mind. Making the decisions that would allow her to move seamlessly into action the moment Gibbs released them.

He had no doubt what her plans for the night entailed. She'd been an assassin for a long time, from a young age. At the moment her approach to this situation was probably not all that unlike Gray's. Ziva would gather information on the source of the threat. She would hunt it down. And then she would quietly, irrevocably end it, no matter the cost. She'd as good as told him that, because protecting these kids meant redemption. It meant everything.

His agents were tipping toward the man he'd been when he set out to destroy Hernandez. Caught up in their anger. Not above the law, exactly. Just beyond caring about its consequences. Gibbs felt a dull, unpleasant thrill shoot through his gut. He wasn't entirely sure that he'd be able to haul them back from this edge.

McGee, when he sat down with them a few minutes later, looked lost. Left behind, because McGee hadn't grasped a boy's hand and followed him into the dark. Hadn't watched the kid appear impossibly in the night, seen him tossed into the air like an infant, or heard him scream. And been horribly, treacherously glad all the same, because he was tied to a truck, waiting to die, listening for a woman he loved and an attack he couldn't stop. Hadn't lain dirty and tired and hungry on the hard ground with them, and been so grateful, listening to Gray suffer for them.

Gibbs let Tony and Ziva sit there, sullen in the unforgiving light of his dining room, because they needed to remember, to feel it - what had saved them then. It wasn't their dedication to a job, some pale duty. And it wasn't the flash fire desire for revenge, to kill what had hurt them, or those they loved. It was care. Devotion. The team. It all started because his agents had simply refused to give up on their team, or on him. They'd forged alliances and worked together. It was what made them great. And because of that devotion, when it was over and the fallout had come - the doubt over what they had done, the cost of it - they'd had each other to turn to. Still had the team. And Gibbs would be damned if it would end any other way.

McGee wasn't really into long awkward silences. "Ground floor of the house is clean, Boss. Found this in the receiver of the landline. They were listening to your calls." McGee handed him a silver chip.

So somebody out there had a good idea of just how infrequently he used his home phone. Gibbs held the tiny chip out and squinted at it, not bothering with his reading glasses. He placed it on the table.

"Cartel or FBI?"

"It's a really common device. It could have been anyo - "

Tim jumped in his seat as Gibbs slammed his fist down onto the table, shattering the bug and the pretense of calm. Tony jerked as well, attention brought swiftly back to the room. But Ziva's dark eyes only shifted to evaluate the noise, dismissed it, and went back to stillness. Building the op in her mind.

"Is there a point to this party?" Dinozzo, impatient.

"Waiting for one of you to tell me what happened today."

A long, three-way glance. Finally Ziva spoke up. She had been the initial contact, and she was the one with near perfect recall. "Cassie called me a little before 1500. We were in the bullpen, you had gone to meet Kort. She told me that her car was being tailed. That the pursuers were aggressive . . . "

McGee had loaded the photos onto an ipad Abby kept in the lab. He illustrated the story for Gibbs once Ziva got to the bridge, scrolling through the images of the FBI agents and O'Donnell.

Gibbs studied them, but he didn't recognize any of the faces there.

" . . . A third man stepped out of the lead car. He was also armed but did not have his weapon drawn. I recognized him as Declan O'Donnell - "

"We need to know how he got here," Tony interrupted.

Ziva cast him a sidelong glance. "He spoke in Spanish at first. He said 'Coptero -'"

Tony sat forward in his seat and glared at Gibbs. Then he stood up. "We need to know what the hell Kort was doing when this guy was strolling through customs!"

Gibbs had to look up to maintain eye contact. "Sit down."

"We need to - "

"And we will. But right now you need to sit down."

"Fuck this! I need to _find_ him." Tony spun away from them. Checking his sidearm as he stalked toward the front door. Leaving.

But then he stopped, halfway there, and fluidly reversed course, heading through the kitchen and slamming out the back. Not leaving. Waiting for Gibbs.

Well. Could have been worse. Gibbs tossed a _stay_ at Ziva and McGee and followed. His second was pacing a hole into the floor of his deck.

"What the hell, Dinozzo - "

"We're wasting time. We have been all along! We should have got him when we had the chance. We _knew_ \- "

"Shut up and get inside."

"We could have ended him. So fucking stupid! We knew, with Gray, we knew what he - "

"Shut up, Dinozzo," Gibbs ordered, suddenly cold and furious. "And get inside."

"Can't talk about this in there," Tony growled. One of his hands shot toward the house like he wanted to punch it. "With them."

Dinozzo's rage was incendiary, the force of it made his usually graceful movements jerky, his voice hoarse. But he still didn't want to expose McGee, maybe even Ziva, to this. To the cool truth that he was going to kill O'Donnell. And it wouldn't be clean, wouldn't be legal. It would be murder.

"Well, we're not talking about it out here, either," Gibbs said. He got into his second's face and stared him down hard. "Get it together. And get back inside."

Gibbs left him there in the dark, returned to the rest of the team still sitting silent at the table. He felt the weight of McGee's wide eyes, and Ziva's shrewd ones, and waved for her to continue. Dinozzo joined them silently after a few moments, still stiff with anger. Gibbs hadn't been sure the other man would follow him back in. Obviously Tony had gotten close to Gray - that level of distress was personal.

" . . . and O'Donnell said, 'Alright, of course, it is just the information for one of my contacts at the FBI. They will be able to put you in touch with me if you would ever like to talk. But you can find him on your own I am sure. The name is Arena.'"

McGee broke into Ziva's flat monologue. "Abby looked him up, I got a photo off the FBI database. He wasn't one of them there today - " Tim pulled the ipad toward him again and scrolled for the folder where he'd stashed the picture. "Frederick Arena," he went on, still frowning at the screen, "he's part of the— "

"Frederick," Ziva said. And looked sharply at Gibbs. "Fred."

Gibbs nodded slightly.

"Fred?" Tony leaned forward with the focus of a shark scenting blood. "Someone we know?"

Tim was looking at the gadget on the table, just opening up the folder he'd been searching for. Tony had his eyes on the screen too, waiting to see if he would recognize Frederick, Fred.

Ziva was the one to register the subtle movement, a shift at the corner of her eye. She was up, her gun drawn, centered on the target too fast to actually see it. Dinozzo and McGee followed instantly, like dominoes in reverse.

Alex stood at the top of the basement steps, the littlest girl standing behind him, looking down the barrel of Ziva's pistol. There was tripwire silence for a moment. 

And then Alex grinned. "Wow. Ziva, yeah?"

"What do you need, Alex?"

The kid tore his eyes away from Ziva reluctantly. Gibbs was still sitting calmly at the table that all three of his agents had abandoned.

Alex gestured to the little girl standing behind him. "Bathroom."

"Second door on the left." Gibbs pointed him up the stairs. Didn't want them shut into a ground floor room. Three sets of eyes followed the kids toward the stairs.

He had to rap the table with his knuckles to get his agents' attention.

They looked down at him, the comprehension sudden, and probably damn near total. Nothing trumped protecting a child. Not for Gibbs. Nothing made him more focused, or scarier, and - in some corner of his mind that he knew they had the intelligence to see - very little came closer to scaring him.

"Sit." They sat. "Continue."

Ziva finished her retelling of that afternoon's events. Her voice very slightly easier, Tony's posture less stiff.

Ziva explained to Tony and McGee, in dark tones, who Agent Fred was. One of the youngest members of Dargas' unit. One of the two who had interrogated Gray for the FBI.

Those agents had seen Gray, seen the scarring on his arms, heard rumors about him carrying a weapon, suspected his involvement with drugs. They could have a photograph of him. They had seen how Gibbs protected Gray. More than that, they'd been humiliated by it. If they pulled the parking lot footage they would have seen Kort. And they worked in a trafficking unit, close to drug runners. A breath away from the cartels. Now Agent Fred was O'Donnell's "contact" at the FBI.

Fred must have decided to identify Gray, sniffing around among the FBI's informants until someone from the Calera cartel recognized him. And that someone passed it up the chain to Diablo. Fred was the leak.

Ziva paused when Alex and the girl stepped back through the living room to return to the basement. The kids were silent, visible only for a moment before they disappeared again.

When Ziva finished, Gibbs settled the full weight of his attention on McGee until the silence grew uncomfortable and McGee began to fidget.

"Boss?"

"What's our goal, Tim?"

McGee's eyes widened at his first name.

Uncertainty. But McGee would always be the kid in the class who wanted to have the answer.

" . . . To bring down the cartel?"

"Do Colombian cartels fall under NCIS jurisdiction?"

McGee blinked. Gibbs could give a paper bag for jurisdiction, he'd never paid the least attention to it. But the meaning of the question was clear enough: wrong answer.

"No."

"We're not in the bullpen, Tim. We're in my _house_. What is our goal."

Gibbs studied McGee, and waited. McGee wasn't an assassin or a spy like Ziva, didn't have violence and deception in his blood. He wasn't a natural-born cop like Dinozzo either, didn't get his greatest thrills outsmarting perps and putting scumbags in lockup.

McGee knew naval bases and Johns Hopkins and computers and Gibb's team, just as Alex had said.

But what McGee knew was very different from who he was. Tim was the older brother on Gibbs' team. He was the son, the grandson - the closest thing to a family man they had. And there was one reason alone that he joined NCIS. One reason that made him an agent instead of a research scientist or a millionaire programmer, or even an admiral like his father.

McGee nodded, suddenly certain, sure of it to his bones. He tilted his head toward the basement door. "To protect them."

Gibbs quirked an eyebrow. "O'Donnell shows and they need our protection. Don't they have anyone else?"

McGee hesitated. "They've got Kort."

"Anyone else?"

" . . . Not that I know of."

"Alright. And who is protecting O'Donnell, McGee?"

McGee thought about that. Ziva and Tony stared at Gibbs. " . . . His contacts at the FBI," McGee said slowly.

"And?"

"The cartel."

"And?"

McGee just looked at him blankly.

"Who else, McGee?"

"The Colombian government," Ziva said quietly. "Kort warned us in the beginning that sections of the government itself were allied in the civil war with the most powerful cartels."

Gibbs didn't take his eyes off McGee. "And?"

Tim shook his head, glanced at the agents sitting still beside him.

"Who is the Colombian government's ally, McGee."

Tony sat forward, eyes sharp.

"We are," Tim said slowly.

"Are we going to get away with assassinating O'Donnell on US soil, Tim?"

The quiet that descended on the heels of that question was so absolute it felt like a solid thing, like concrete set between them.

McGee glanced between Tony and Ziva, sitting stonefaced on either side of him. "Protected by Colombia, the US and the cartel? Probably not."

"What's our goal, Tim?"

"To protect the kids."

"Can we do that from prison?"

"No, Boss."

"We will get him eventually," Gibbs said evenly. "But not tonight. Anyone who needs to kill him now, needs it more than anything else, should leave now. Shouldn't they, Tim?"

McGee stared back at him. An older brother and a father, and total understanding between them where there had never quite been before. "Yes."

Gibbs let his gaze drop to the table. Spoke to the room. "If any one of you can't commit to working with the team on this one you get off here. And I'll tell you right now, we're not going to move against O'Donnell. Not tonight."

His agents were quiet. Not stewing in their fury now. Refocusing. Reconsidering their priorities. There could still be something to save here, a happy ending among all the ways it could play out. If they pulled in their anger. If they did their jobs, as Gibbs defined them, and did them well.

"What's the plan?" Dinozzo, rare hesitance in his words.

"We don't know if O'Donnell is working alone or if he brought a platoon with him. According to Alex, Gray and Cassie are both out looking for him now. Team stays here to provide protection, at least until Abby calls with a lead or we have more intel."

"What about Kort?" McGee asked.

But Gibbs never gave them the answers that they could figure out for themselves.

"Gray brought at least some of the children in need of protection to Gibbs' house," Ziva said. "Gibbs is in a good position to protect them, whether from O'Donnell or the FBI. Gray has probably enlisted Kort's help in hunting O'Donnell. Kort has more experience with the cartel than we do, and the CIA will be better positioned than we would be to work around the FBI. The cartel actually is in Kort's jurisdiction . . . If I was going to hunt O'Donnell," she continued, almost softly, "I would begin with Kort."

Tony's eyes flicked from Ziva, staring steadily back at him, to the basement. And from Gibbs' rifle to Gibbs. "Alright. So how about we bring in backup for the house? From NCIS?"

He was in, that meant. They were all in.

Gibbs felt something release inside him.

He could have worked this without Tony or Ziva, without both of them even. It just would have been a hell of a lot harder, and it was going to be hard enough on its own.


	21. The Cost

"Alright. So how about we bring in backup for the house?"

Bringing in more agents would mean more attention drawn to Gibbs' house, more people in the know, a risk. Gibbs let his eyes wander toward the window, cloudy through the curtain, and shook his head. "I'm prepared for an attack," he admitted. "But I doubt there'll be one here." And Gray hadn't thought it likely either, which was why he left the kids at his house.

"The cartel is allowed to function in Colombia because it's politically advantageous to the government there - and to our efforts to stabilize the region," McGee pondered. "Londono is an asset in the war. But the cartel would risk that tolerance if they openly go after a federal agent on American soil. So here at least O'Donnell will probably be cautious - covert."

"They want something," Tony said abruptly. McGee and Ziva looked at him. "It's not an attack. It never was. O'Donnell - today was a warning. Cass has something he wants."

McGee took a careful breath. "If she's his daughter, she could _be_ what he wants."

Tony ignored him. He stared into space, talking to himself as he felt his way forward. Doing what Dinozzo did. Outsmarting the perp. "He played his hand, let us know he's here. But not to attack. He set up a meeting . . . Why? He didn't even try to get her to come with him. That stuff about going home, forgiveness - that was a bribe. Or a threat."

He looked at Gibbs, and the others followed suit. "The kids have something he wants."

Gibbs nodded. "Maybe."

It seemed pretty damn likely.

The phone rang, startling all of them. But it was only the Chinese delivery guy, waiting out at the curb like Gibbs had told him to in no uncertain terms.

He sent Tony and Ziva out to get the food and pulled down ten dinner plates, more than he'd ever used since the last ex-wife took them out of the box and put them up there. He dumped a pile of forks and some serving spoons on top and instructed McGee to fill a jug with water and get the half-gallon of milk out of the fridge. When Ziva and Tony were back, loaded down with long, foil-wrapped platters and plastic bags, he led them down the basement steps.

The kids were sitting at the worktable, backpacks and schoolbooks spread out in front of them.

Under the shocked eyes of his agents the kids cleared their books away and set up the spread, mumbling shy thank-you's and, at Gibbs' insistence, finally serving themselves. Gibbs, being a bastard and still somewhat pissed, waited until Tony reached for a plate.

"You three," he nodded at his team. "You're relieving the watch. Go out through the backdoor."

Gibbs glanced at the clock on the wall, frowning. Whoever the watch was, they'd been out in the cold for at least four hours now.

"Out – side?" Tony, sounding doubtful. Looking at the impossibly young kids, sitting defenseless, apparently, in Gibbs' basement. And at the spareribs.

"Better grab your coats." Gibbs picked up a plate and the serving spoon and grinned, despite himself, at the sesame chicken. "It's cold out there."

They went.

Gibbs was just sitting down at his workbench when they came back in.

"There's nobody out there, Boss."

He raised an eyebrow - the not impressed one.

"We walked the perimeter and called out," Ziva added. "No one answered."

He chewed for a few seconds, thinking that over, and looked to Alex. The kid had what must have been pounds of lo mein on his plate.

"They going to come down for me?"

Alex shrugged.

So Gibbs went up the stairs and out the back, into the cold night air.

He paused on the deck, still close to the house, and took in the sharp, dark night. The suburban rush hour was long gone. It was silent, crystal clear, and the stars were brilliant in a velvet sky.

Shame how much of his work for NCIS was indoors - the bullpen, interrogation rooms, MTAC.

He missed this.

His breath frosted pure, ghostly white in the sliver of light spilling from the door behind him.

"Your relief is here," he said quietly, words sent into the watchful dark. "And so is dinner."

The agents stood there in silence for a minute. Waiting. And then a soft scrape above them, movement in the shadows, and a girl about Cassie's age dropped down from Gibbs' roof. Long, dark curly hair, pulled back. Long face, long limbs. Curious eyes.

She looked Gibbs over methodically, considered his agents. Then she slung the rifle down from her shoulder and held it out. The rifle would have a longer range of course, and more stopping power, than the pistols his agents were carrying. 

Gibbs scanned the roof. There were supposed to be three up there, and two more on the ground. "What about the others?"

"Three for three," the girl said.

Three agents. Replacing . . . ?

Gibbs glanced around.

There were two boys visible in the yard now, standing close. Tony followed Gibbs' gaze to them and stepped back, startled.

"I'll take a shift." Gibbs reached for the rifle, grasped the barrel. It didn't budge.

"You know the house. You should stay inside."

She was quieter than Cassie. A little cooler, but just as bold. He figured it wasn't worth an argument. Besides - she was right.

"How will my people know if someone approaching is one of yours?"

"Gray or Cop will be with anyone you don't know."

"McGee, Dinozzo - you going to recognize both of them?"

"Yeah Boss."

Alright. Ziva was the best on the team with a rifle, not counting Gibbs. And she was the lightest of them too. He stepped back. "Ziver, you're on the roof."

The girl passed Ziva her rifle. "On the left," she gestured up at the left side of his house. "Halfway up."

Ziva nodded and with a boost from Tim and Tony had pulled herself onto the roof and melted into its shadows. Gibbs caught a glimpse of her expression. She looked happier than she had in weeks. If anyone from the cartel did show a face in his neighborhood it would be blown off in a hurry.

"You two on the perimeter." Gibbs gestured to Tony and McGee. "Don't be visible from the street. Don't shoot anyone you can't identify as cartel. If you do fire try to avoid a kill shot, you got me?" He said that last loud enough for Ziva to hear it.

They nodded. Someone to interrogate and the possibility for more intel would be a lot better than less at this point, because less was definitely what they had. "Go."

They parted, heading toward the fence that enclosed his backyard.

Gibbs waved the three kids standing around him toward the door. "Food's in the basement."

He escorted them in and hovered by the top of the steps long enough to hear happy noises, and silverware. Then he put on the coffeepot and retreated to the couch. An hour passed. When there was a shuffling noise from the backdoor Gibbs raised his pistol and went to meet it. It was Kort, and two more kids.

Gibbs gestured the boys to the basement door. "Your friends are downstairs."

They brushed past him quickly, but he could feel the cold coming off them. They'd been outside.

He reacted just fast enough to grab Kort's arm as the man tried to move past him. "You and I need to talk."

"In a moment." Kort moved determinedly toward the basement, wrenching his arm free violently. "I need to check on something." And he was down the steps.

Gibbs stared after him. Then he refilled his coffee and moved back to the couch. He would give Kort five minutes. The other man reappeared in three and sank down in the armchair next to Gibbs.

He looked strange sitting in the worn chair. The sheen of the white dress shirt under his coat caught the light, like a photograph in a glossy magazine. His suit probably cost more than all of the furniture in Gibbs' house.

"Diablo has crawled back under his rock," Kort said. "We couldn't find a trace of him, or his new friends. We've secured a safe house. I have two cars outside."

To move all the kids? "You think they'll be safer on their own?"

"Yes," Kort said firmly. "The new location is secure while your home is known. Anyway, they won't be on their own." Annoyed. "I'll be with them."

"Gray and Cassie?"

"Cass is on the roof. Spelling the guard. Gray - will probably be here soon."

"If the new location is more secure why not start moving them now? The longer they're here - "

"We'll stick together, wait for the rest of them and move in one group." Kort shook his head, waved tiredly at the ceiling. "Anyway, this is just a precaution. Today was about information for O'Donnell. Intimidation. A full on attack, particularly without the benefit of surprise - not his style. Too much exposure for the cartel. And he knows . . . " Kort leaned back into the chair. Closed his eyes. "A straightforward assault would be a bloodbath. They can defend themselves."

A pause.

Kort glanced his way. "The surveillance is secure?"

"Yeah."

The thumb drive was in a safe at NCIS, inside MTAC. Vance and Gibbs could get to it and nobody else.

"You got any leads on the FBI agents involved?"

"You know that Arena is one of the men who interrogated Gray, one of Dargas' unit?"

Gibbs nodded.

"The FBI is hosting a Latin and South American security conference this week. There was a government flight into Dulles two days ago, set up specifically for the conference. Minimal security since it was all to be vetted government personnel. He must have come in under a false name and taken advantage of that flight. We tried to locate Arena, but if he's on a protection detail for O'Donnell -"

Gibbs nodded. They'd both be tucked away in a safe house, just as impossible to find as anyone in an NCIS house under Gibbs' protection.

"How'd he get the cars and the agents to conduct a chase?"

"I have no idea."

Gibbs had seen photos. Those were government cars. If they'd just disappeared or been stolen there would have been a stink across law enforcement agencies immediately - he and every other agent in DC would've known about it. So O'Donnell had somehow convinced agents to pursue the kids, or to give him the cars to do it . . . ? And according to Kort, O'Donnell had also managed to join the conference but still fly under the radar of the department heads at the FBI . . . unless one of the heads was dirty . . . Unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility.

Too many ifs. They needed to get Agent Fred into an interrogation room. Ask a few questions. One thing in this mess, at least, that Gibbs could look forward to. Maybe he'd get Ziva to charge the Tasers.

They sat there for another half hour. No sound, no movement.

"You have an estimated time of arrival?" Gibbs asked.

"Soon."

Gibbs rubbed softly at the end-of-day stubble coming in on his neck.

They had a terse conversation, proposing methods of finding O'Donnell and gradually discarding them. With the right motivation a man like that knew how to hide his movements. Protecting the kids and investigating the FBI connection were the best moves they could make on O'Donnell right now. The cartel surveillance and the informants coming in tomorrow - they might prove helpful as well.

Eventually the girl with the curly hair and three of the oldest boys in the basement appeared at the top of the stairs. They walked out through the backdoor, and a minute later, his team walked in. Followed by Cassie.

**x**

Gibbs stood to look her over as his agents moved into the living room. Kort stood as well, and walked toward the basement. He stopped to whisper something to her as he passed, and Cass grinned.

"The kids insisted on taking over our positions, Boss," McGee muttered.

Gibbs nodded. Cold out or not, it would be infinitely worse to sit in the basement and stare at the walls. But Cass wasn't moving immediately to the basement steps the way all the other kids had. She'd stopped in the kitchen, not coming any farther into the house, and not retreating either.

She looked fine.

Gibbs asked anyway.

"You okay?"

She nodded, calm as always. "Don't suppose anyone shot him after I left?" she asked.

"No," Ziva said.

Cass tipped to the side a bit to lean against a wall. "Why not?"

Ziva ventured a smile. "Because we would have been killed or arrested by the FBI?"

" . . . Meh."

Out of the corner of his eye Gibbs registered that Tony was moving restlessly, pacing in the tiny space between the living room and the front hall. One hand went up to jerk through his hair.

"Come sit." Gibbs waved a hand at the couch and took the armchair for himself. "Everyone else alright?"

Cassie nodded, moving forward hesitantly and sinking into the sofa. "Truck's evasive driving . . . _skills_ banged us up. He's a maniac. But no one got hurt."

 _Truck_? Gibbs' next question was cut off, because at that point Dinozzo whirled to face her, and finally let loose. 

"No one hurt? Really." Dinozzo yelling was absurdly loud in Gibbs' snug living room. "We don't know that yet, do we, Cop? And it wouldn't be thanks to you, anyway."

Gibbs stiffened, but Cass only sat up a little, mildly startled.

"I'm sorry?"

"No, you're not!" Tony's arms came up, gesticulating wildly. But he had the good sense to stay back.

"Tony - " Ziva said lowly.

"NO!" A roar. And then the words spilled fast and furious. "No. You didn't tell us the plan until you knew we wouldn't be able to get back up out there. And then you didn't have to stop, but you did. To let the others shake their tails - fine. Brilliant." Sarcastic. "And then," Tony laughed shortly, "and then you got out of the car. Eight men pointing guns at your head and you got _out_ of your _armored vehicle_!" Tony paced again. Breathed. "You need to tell us if he's your father," he ground out. "Right now. We need to know."

Gibbs glanced between the two of them. Ready to hear the answer to that, sure. Also ready to break up the brawl if that's what was required. But Cassie looked perfectly fine. Seemed able to accept, intuitively, that Dinozzo wasn't a threat to her.

"He's nothing to me," she said. "And no, I didn't have to get out of the car. But we did need to know why the FBI was chasing us, and revealing myself would make it more likely that we'd find out. We figured it was someone from the cartel. Didn't - I didn't know it would be him, obvi - "

"That is bullshit. What were you _thinking_!" Dinozzo's voice went up at least an octave at the end there.

A pause. And then Cassie shrugged. "I was thinking that we weren't carrying anything they really want."

" _What?_ "

Cass carried on, perfectly calm. And Gibbs began to suspect that she was, at least in part, egging Tony on. Winding him up, for fun. Gibbs shook his head and considered digging out the bottle of Motrin stashed in the downstairs bathroom. The last time he'd had to deal with this kind of group reaction to stress he'd been in the Marines, and it had given him a headache then, too.

"They wouldn't get into a fight that messy and public without a good reason," she said patiently. Dinozzo's head looked like it was about to blow off. Cassie smiled. "And there wasn't a good reason, from their perspective. The cartel trained us. Anyone with the cartel would know we wouldn't have stopped in the first place if we were carrying anything they really want."

"You're insane!"

"I was right."

"You're crazy!"

Tony stormed toward the basement, looking for better space to pace, or Gibbs' bourbon. Ziva watched him go, eyes lingering on the basement door. Her gaze shifted to the front window after a moment, contemplating the night.

And then she excused herself and went after her partner. McGee's gaze followed them and returned to Gibbs, sitting motionless next to Cassie. Tim abruptly retreated, volunteering to guard the backdoor.

Cass turned to Gibbs. Grinned. "He is funny."

He raised an eyebrow and she laughed, a high-strung note. "Tony, I mean. Gray said he would be."

He let the silence play out a bit, and smiled a little. "If you say so."

Now that the fun was over she slumped into the couch. Exhausted again, stress creeping back into her eyes.

"Want something to eat?" Gray had taken coffee with his meals in Colombia . . . "Coffee?"

She said yes to the coffee, only then taking off her coat, and he moved into the kitchen.

"Milk or sugar?"

"Milk please. If you have it."

He opened the fridge, not really expecting to have it. But at some point the carton they'd sent down to the basement with dinner had been brought back up and returned to the fridge, plenty left in it to lighten a cup of coffee.

They sat quietly for a few minutes.

"You handled that well," he observed.

She glanced at him. Knew exactly what he was talking about. "Holly's been helping me."

He nodded.

"Sorry about that," she said. "With Burnett. That was . . . " she groped, and came up with nothing. Shrugged. "I appreciate your help," she said finally, the awkward apology of a teenager.

"From what Holly told me you weren't really in control."

"Yes . . . I regret that. It's better now."

She'd misunderstood, for once. It hadn't been meant as criticism. But Gibbs nodded, keeping it easy. "Nothing to apologize for."

Cassie met his gaze over the mug, and they looked at each other straight on for a long moment. Guilt in her dark eyes. Shame.

So different from Gray. Still young.

He leaned forward, stage whispering the confidence. "I've been tempted to do the exact same thing." Perfectly true. More times than he could count.

"It felt pretty good," she admitted. "At first. Then I lost it. Kind of scary."

"It happens." To people with stress disorders, mostly.

They sat there for awhile, Gibbs weighing the best time to bring in Vance and Fornell, thinking over the strategy for the rest of the night and for tomorrow, after Gray finally reached them and the kids were gone and safe.

The second time Cassie wiped a hand across her face the movement registered. Her head was down, eyes fixed on the mug in her hands like the coffee in it was the most fascinating show on earth. He couldn't actually see her face. 

He got up and came back with a box of tissues from the bathroom, setting it on the table between them. She didn't take one, but she did seem to rally around glaring at the box.

"I shouldn't be afraid of him," she muttered. Frustration bled into her voice.

He waited for her to go on, but she'd fallen silent. Which was probably worse. Gibbs frowned down at his own coffee. It didn't seem likely that O'Donnell would mount an attack on his house. But it would still be reckless to call in Holly.

So . . .

"Most people are afraid of men like that," he finally said.

"No. You don't - I shouldn't be, really. Not him." She collected herself, tone almost angry. "He never hurt us."

Gibbs could have let that go. But O'Donnell was here, and there were still too many holes. "Only Gray?"

Her eyes tracked to him, and she looked at Gibbs for a long moment, completely neutral. Not giving anything away.

He returned the stare. Not searching or curious, not as an interrogator. Not bluffing, either. They knew about Gray.

"What do you think you know?"

Gibbs rubbed at a smudge on the battered old mug in his hands. Kept his focus there. "He has marks on his left shoulder and chest. We saw something similar in documentation from a human rights group doing field work in central Colombia a few years ago. Read some of the interviews they conducted." Over two hundred of them.

Gibbs met her eyes, finally, to find her looking frankly back at him. 

"You don't know anything," she said.

"Who does?" he asked seriously.

"Huh?"

"Does Holly know?"

An incredulous stare. "She's not going to tell you anything." 

Gibbs waited, watching her closely. Trying to figure out if that meant the kid had spoken to Holly, or if it meant Cass didn't know. Or simply that she wouldn't tell him either way. 

"But you know that," she said slowly.

And then she had it. She was that sharp. "Holly knows, he talks to her. And Kort I think. Some of us know," she flicked a finger toward the basement. "Not the little ones."

Gibbs nodded. That was good. Gray wasn't totally alone. And not all those kids were exposed to it, thank god. He already felt ill.

She noticed. And she understood. Seemed to consider the merits of spelling it out.

"Gray - he . . . made a deal. So Diablo never messed with us." She sucked in a slow breath, kept her voice low. "With the rest of us."

Gibbs frowned at her. How the hell did he get the power to make a bargain like that? And Jesus, why would he want to -

Now wasn't the time to ask. And Cassie wasn't the one who the question was for, anyway. Gibbs pressed his hands together and sat still.

"And now . . . all I can think is the deal is off," she said steadily. Ashamed, and angry, and above it all, terrified.

"We won't let him get to you."

Cassie nodded. "I know."

Gibbs studied her hunched form. She didn't believe him.

They sat in silence until Gibbs' phone rang. It was Abby. She'd determined their equipment was clean and run the photos, but only found a few of the faces in the FBI database.

The rest she identified as Colombian army.


	22. Intel

Kort and the team gathered in the living room even before he was off the phone, following Gibbs' side of the call. He hung up, but didn't have a chance to gather his thoughts and explain Abby's news. As it turned out, he didn't have to explain it.

"So the drivers were Colombian special forces?"

Ridiculous. She hadn't even heard the other end of the conversation.

"Yeah."

"Should have guessed," Cass said.

When they all looked at her she shrugged. "They like to recruit from the Army. If he snuck into the country under the cover of going to a security conference he could easily bring military contacts loyal to the cartel with him. And I have been in chases like that one before," she admitted. "Just never on the chased side."

She sat calm and collected on his couch. Her mannerisms were so normal, just a little more mature than you would expect. It was easy to forget.

But he remembered Gray stalking that patrol. Sitting calmly through an abusive interrogation. And the routine response to being shot, to grieving for a friend, played out on the floor just a few feet away. The smoothly executed operation that unfolded just hours ago, kids manipulating both his team and the people chasing them into the most advantageous positions for themselves.

_Cassie got out of the SUV. She was carrying an assault rifle, but held it out of sight . . ._

_The cartel trained us . . . Just never on the chased side._

Cassie was less abrasive. A lot less angry. But it was clear she came from the same world as Gray. He'd been thinking they didn't have much intel on the cartel. But that wasn't precisely true. His house was crawling with its foot soldiers.

"You've carried out missions like this one before," he said. Only on the other side.

"Of course. Never in America," she replied evenly, "but Diablo can be. . . unpredictable. And he is more independent since he began his operations in South Africa. He may not be acting with the full knowledge or approval of the cartel."

Unpredictable? The man was a psychopath. And if he was off the cartel leash -

"Should we be worried about a direct assault?" Gibbs was reconsidering the backup idea.

But Cass shook her head, glancing at Kort. "Diablo is aggressive, not suicidal. The cartel will turn on him if he does anything to expose it to American retaliation. Londono has been cautious of the United States ever since he lost Conlon to the CIA. That was a warning - that the same thing could happen to him as happened to the Calera brothers, if he brought too much American attention to himself. It's what makes DC such a good place to hide from him."

"And American agents such valuable allies," Ziva observed.

Cassie grinned. "An Israeli would know."

Gibbs barely heard it. Conlon, she'd said. Since he lost _Conlon_ to the CIA . . .

He let his eyes drift from Cassie to Kort. Conlon was one of the Irishmen, the ex-IRA who disappeared into Colombia in the early 90s and reappeared as part of the Calera cartel - just like O'Donnell.

Gibbs had suspected that Conlon was dead. But not that the CIA had killed him. He pinned Kort with an assessing stare. The man returned it, expressionless. Gibbs had a sudden, sinking feeling that Kort had killed Conlon.

There was a buzzing sound from the direction of Cassie's pants, then, the irritating noise loud in the quiet room. She dug out a phone, glanced at the face of it.

"It's Gray," she said, and flipped it open. "Yes."

" . . . Yes, Truck wants to."

" . . . Hold on."

"He's twenty minutes out," she told the room, jogging toward the basement steps. She disappeared down the stairs and was up again a few seconds later, followed by two kids, moving quickly out the backdoor.

"Give it to me," Kort demanded. Cass shrugged and tossed him the phone as she passed him by.

He glanced at Gibbs' team, watching from the living room, and turned his back on them to mutter into the cell.

"Huh. FBI's not listening to all this?" Dinozzo looked at McGee.

"That's an old phone."

" . . . yeah? And?"

"Remote bugging works by wireless connection. I doubt that phone even has wireless capability."

"Only a nice phone is susceptable," Tony murmured. "That's not nice."

Two of the older kids came in through the backdoor, relieved by the two that Cass sent out. Gibbs recognized one of them as Tomas - the tall young man who had picked Gray up months ago, after he was shot and spent the night on Gibbs' couch. The other was the curly-haired girl who'd come down off his roof earlier that night.

Kort reluctantly gave the phone back to Cass. She set it down on Gibbs' kitchen table and glanced up at the other two kids. They gathered around and shared a look. Cassie subtly shook her head.

The curly-haired girl turned quickly to assess the agents staring at them. Her hair was windblown, cheeks pink from the cold. She hastily turned her back on them.

"No sé qué decir - no sé qué iba a hacer," she said lowly.

Cass looked at her sharply. "Bueno, no digas eso. Gray ya está enojado."

The other girl's voice rose. "Diego no iba - "

"Eso no importa! Haz lo que quieras."

Cassie leaned forward and decisively pressed a button on the open phone, ending one conversation by starting another. "You're on."

The three of them stood around the table and stared down at the cell.

"Gray," Tomas said finally. "If you don't say anything, the people on the other end of the call don't know if you're there or not."

A tense pause. And then, "You want to talk, Truck? I'm here."

Tony and Ziva looked at each other. Gray sounded distant, cold. Like before, in the jungle.

"He's a risk to everyone." Tomas - also known as Truck, apparently - spoke calmly.

"So?"

Truck glanced at the girls standing beside him and leaned forward to rest his hands on the table. "So he stays here with you. The rest - "

Kort stepped forward. "Not a good idea."

But the kids ignored him.

" - go to the safe house," Truck finished.

"Cop," Gray said through the speaker.

"No."

"Andy."

It was a vote, and it was rapid fire. All except for Andy. The other two looked at the curly-haired girl. She looked mutely back at them, the silence heavy.

"Truck. Explain to her how it works, with the phone." Gray's voice was flat through the speaker. But it came through as a taunt, and Gibbs smirked despite the tension in the room. Manipulative bastard.

Andy straightened, predictably, and glared at the cell. "I want to do what Diego would," she hissed. _You bastard_ was left unsaid.

Cass closed her eyes. But the rest of the room stared at the glowing black cell, laid open on the table.

" . . . It's your call now," Gray finally said, no inflection at all.

To Gibbs it was radiant of control.

"It should be his," she insisted, low and angry. Did she - ?

She _blamed_ Gray. So many things the kid had said clicked quietly into place.

"I want to do what he would -"

"Sure. Somebody give Andy a Glock." The tone was laced with boredom. "And stand back. If she does it right her brain is going to go everywhere. Make sure you get it right under your chin, Andy girl - "

"Yes," she snapped. Furious. "Go."

"Agree. You ready to move?"

Cassie's eyes flew open to stare at the phone.

"Yeah, sooner the better," Truck said.

"Then go."

Silence, and Cass reached for the phone. The call was over -

"Hermano," Cassie said quietly.

" . . . Yeah."

No, it wasn't. Gray was still there.

"What do you think?"

"He's gone," Gray said simply.

Tomas leaned even farther forward, from relief or intensity Gibbs couldn't tell, almost hovering over the phone. "The agents?"

A humorless laugh, tinny through the speaker. "Really gone."

"Yeah," Truck nodded. "Agree. Cop?"

"Yes."

They glanced at Andy, but she just looked at the phone. Lost.

"I won't see you," Truck said. "All good, hermano?"

"Si, good." The tone quieter, if not softer.

And then the call was really over.

Kort spun and disappeared into the basement, and Andy followed him. Cass looked pissed as she swept the phone off the table and shoved it back into her pocket.

Gibbs glanced between Cassie and Tomas. "Someone want to tell me what just happened?"

"Most of us will go to the new house," Tomas said. "A few will stay here. Is that good? - okay?"

So they'd decided to split up. And Kort and Cassie weren't happy about it.

"Yeah, fine."

Within five minutes most of the kids who had been in Gibbs' basement were transferred to the two SUVs sitting in the driveway. Only Alex and two of the younger ones remained in the basement. Cassie and Kort prowled Gibbs' backyard, a skeleton watch.

So Kort wasn't going with the bulk of the kids to the new house after all.

Gibbs offered his agents as guards at the new location, but was firmly turned down.

"That happened quickly," Ziva muttered. She stood at the window, parting the curtain just enough to get a clear view of the cars filled with children driving away. "I do not like this."

Gibbs was still sitting in his armchair, elbows on his knees, his agents standing grouped around him. He looked up and waved for them to sit down. "They're used to it." Which was useful, but actually made the situation more infuriating. They shouldn't be used to it.

"McGee," he tossed the portable to his agent. "I want Abby to check on what we have available."

They discussed the possibility and the merits of moving Gray and the kids who remained to an NCIS safe house, and using backup for guards to free up the team. But Vance would have to be brought in  -

Tony was mid-sentence when he broke off, eyes centered on the hallway leading to the backdoor. Ziva followed his gaze and Gray was standing there. 

When he saw them looking at him he continued forward, out of the shadows. His clothing was dark and the movement distinctly, effortlessly predatory. McGee was facing away from the kitchen, sitting in one of the dining room chairs. Gray moved swiftly and was standing practically on top of him by the time Tim turned around.

McGee grunted and surged to his feet, stumbling backwards a step before he regained his footing.

Tim waited for Gibbs to say something, or maybe Ziva or Tony. But none of them said anything at all, even when McGee glanced back at them. He frowned at the disquiet of the room, and the boy standing in front of him. Gray shouldn't have looked so menacing. "Gray. Are you . . . alright?"

"I'm fine, Agent McGee." Gray paused. And added a polite, "It's been a long time. How are you?" As he spoke he shifted smoothly toward one of the dining room walls, leaning on a chair placed there, and McGee instinctively turned to keep facing him.

"Good," McGee said cautiously. "Glad you're alright."

"You're good? That's great, McGee. I'm glad you're good."

Silence.

"Uh - Cassie and Kort are outside," McGee said. Never any good at the awkward silences.

But Gray was. He raised his eyebrows and seemed to settle his focus on McGee, considering him with blank, washed out eyes. That's what made him seem menacing, McGee realized - he was  _blank_. The weight of the room's silence lent the look force. And the slow, thoughtful words, when they came, fell heavily.

"That is so useful to know, Agent McGee. I'm remembering now. You're the smart one." Gray smiled. "Right?" 

Tim watched him warily. Closer to the kid than anyone else. Feeling a lot more exposed. 

"It makes so much sense that you would have that kind of intelligence. I mean, consider this . . . amazing team you have." Gray gestured toward the agents in Gibbs' living room. "That's a lot of intelligence. I'm not nearly so smart." A pause. "Do you even know how smart you all are? What's the average IQ do you think, McGee?"

When McGee didn't answer Gray leaned forward. "Go on and guess, McGee."

The smile was the same, but the tone - less friendly. Almost real. Tim glanced again at Gibbs, but the boss was just sitting there, looking at Gray. Letting Tim be the foil.

Fine. McGee would play. "Okay. 130."

Gray's eyes widened, and it would have been funny if it wasn't so slick, and the feel of the air so dangerous. McGee scanned the kid's body. He was carrying at least a pistol.

"Tim McGee. Gibbs must have his hands full with you. Selling yourself so short." The words were slow, confident, clashing oddly with the charged air. "Don't you know how dangerous it is to doubt your team?" An assessing smile. "Did having a powerful daddy give you low self-esteem, McGee?"

"No."

"But you feel insecure," Gray said thoughtfully. "You shouldn't though, McGee. You're all so intelligent, so experienced. And connected too, aren't you? You know why Tony's father was angry? When his son decided to be a jock? Become a cop?"

McGee shifted, annoyed. Why weren't they talking about something that mattered - like a new safe house, for god's sake?

"McGee?"

"No."

Gray laughed. The same sly laugh that Gibbs gave to murderers, when they'd hanged themselves in the interrogation room. A snake laughing at a rat. McGee felt a trickle of sweat run down his lower back. He hadn't even realized he was nervous, until he felt that. And then he was really nervous.

"You don't even understand why I'm asking. Tony does, though."

McGee glanced at Tony, who was sitting still as stone. No fidgeting, no pacing. It made him look like an entirely different person.

"I don't think it's relevant," McGee tried. "We were talk - "

"It's relevant because he's so _smart_ , McGee. Daddy thought he was wasting his potential. Why play sports for Ohio State when you can go to Harvard? Make all the grades without breaking a sweat?"

McGee was silent. And then he frowned. Gray was shifting, turning - moving a little oddly, but very fast. Tim registered that Gibbs was moving too, reacting decisively.

Everything was still again in less then a second. But Gray was holding Gibbs' rifle now, the one that had been leaning against the dining room wall. He held it casually, one handed, as if he had just picked it up to admire it, the butt braced easily against his body. But the way they were standing - the rifle pointed at McGee's head.

Tim glanced toward his team. Ziva and Tony sat motionless, just as they had before. But Gibbs had his pistol in his hands, leveled at Gray's chest.

"Gonna answer the question, McGee?" Gray prodded.

Gibbs wasn't going to let anything happen to one of his agents, Tim thought. Not right in front of his eyes. But Gibbs didn't say anything, either. That meant he thought this conversation had a point. Even if it was just to let Gray vent. So Gibbs thought the kid was just making a point.

Not that any of them knew Gray well enough to really know. So Gibbs wasn't so sure that he hadn't drawn his gun.

McGee's head started to pound, in time with his heartbeat.

"Tony's a good agent," he said finally.

"Is he? He doesn't have Ziva's smarts though, does he. All those languages, that memory. But that's not even what she's best at, is it?"

Gray waited.

"No."

The kid nodded, rifle rock steady on Tim's head even as his body moved with the motion. "That's right. It takes a certain amount of intelligence to be that good at killing people." He leaned forward. Smiled again. "She's so good she used to do it accidently. But she's not the smartest either, McGee. You know who is, don't you?"

"Gibbs?" Tim said cautiously.

"I agree, McGee. Can't run circles around people the way Gibbs does without being the smartest agent in the room. You know what makes him so much smarter than you? It's not the IQ." Gray paused, but he answered the question himself. And when he did, the smile fell away, and all the pretense, the fake friendliness was gone. "He anticipates, McGee. He prepares. Not much takes Gibbs by surprise, does it."

It took everything Tim had to glance away from the barrel pointed at him. The kid wasn't pretending anymore. The voice wasn't fake. And the rifle looked blacker than it had before.

But Tim tore his eyes away from it, to look at Gibbs. Still Gibbs didn't say anything.

So McGee took a breath and plowed on. "You can't think - Gibbs didn't know that O'Donnell was here."

"Because your team wasn't smart enough to track him down?" Gray asked. "Or because you just didn't care enough to do it? What do you think, McGee? Was Gibbs incompetent, or just too busy doing other things?"

Tim stared at him.

"He slipped through the cracks, Gray," Tony finally spoke, his usually animated voice flat. "I'm sorry."

Gray looked steadily at Tim. "Do you know why Gibbs doesn't like apologies, McGee?"

"They're a sign of weakness."

Gray laughed. "Do you really believe that?"

" . . . N-no."

"I bet Gibbs doesn't, either. Thing is, he's put together a team that shouldn't have to apologize, because you're just that good. Nothing should slip through the cracks. No one should be able to outsmart you. If you have to apologize it means you weren't trying hard enough, if you were trying at all. Apology," Gray said quietly, "means you fucked up."

The barrel looked huge, bigger than it had a minute ago. McGee nodded slightly.

"You shouldn't be so afraid, Tim," Gray said softly. "Gibbs knew I would go for the rifle. He thinks ahead. But then, so do I. That's how I know he's not going to shoot me. Do you know why?"

Tim didn't have an answer.

Gray's gaze never left Tim, but when he spoke, the words were for someone else. "What are you still doing here, Hook?"

" . . . like it here."

McGee's eyes shot to the basement doorway. Alex was standing just far enough out of it to have a good angle on the living room. His pistol looked like it was trained on Gibbs.

"Hook will go for Gibbs first," Gray said. "Then Ziva, she's the fastest draw. Then Tony - he's the most accurate with a side arm, actually. Just not the fastest shot. Obviously you would be dead first, Tim. It's not Gibbs' intelligence that you most admire, is it?"

God, his head hurt. "No."

"It's the fact that he would kill me without hesitating, isn't it? You don't even think he'd feel bad. Do you, McGee?"

"I most admire his courage. And his leadership," Tim said honestly.

"His courageous ability to kill me without hesitating. And then his leadership in not even feeling bad about it?"

McGee glanced at Gibbs. The boss's gaze was calm, fixed on Gray. The gun in his hands steady.

Gray nodded as if McGee had agreed. "I think you're right. Do you know why he wouldn't feel bad?"

McGee didn't say anything. The questions felt like punches, shoves, pushing him back on the ropes. Not because what Gray was saying was so terrible, really. It was just too perceptive. Gray knew too much about them, and he was extremely angry.

"C'mon, McGee. Gibbs knows why you admire him. He's not going to feel bad to hear you say it. Why doesn't Gibbs ever hesitate?"

McGee was silent.

"Tell him to answer me, Gibbs."

And Gibbs spoke. "You can go on, Tim."

McGee took a breath. "His training."

"No," Gray said. "And don't pretend to be more stupid than you are, McGee. I know exactly how smart you are. And how dumb."

" . . . He's desensitized."

"That's right. He doesn't feel things the same way you do, McGee. It makes him brave, and cold. Calculating. Isn't that right, Gibbs?"

Gibbs didn't say anything.

"He could _calculate_ not to bother with Diablo. Gibbs would be irritated if Cop's head had been blown off today, but he wouldn't lose any sleep over it, would he? Lucky for me, my entire team is desensitized. No doubters like you, McGee. No illusions about how we've been played. No hesitation. Hook stayed here because he's decided he likes Gibbs, yeah? But Hook won't hesitate to kill him. He wouldn't even feel bad about it. Go back downstairs, Hook."

There wasn't any sound from the top of the steps. But when McGee's eyes darted that way the doorway was empty.

"You haven't been played," Gibbs said into the quiet.

Gray looked at the rifle, contemplating it a long moment, and then he raised it very slightly. The barrel skimmed away from McGee, pointing at the ceiling instead. "Is this what you used to kill the Caleras?"

It was obscene, to see a weapon like that cradled so casually in the hands of a boy. Even a boy like Gray.

"Yes," Gibbs said.

Gray looked the rifle over oddly, like he'd never seen a gun before. "I don't think you've been trying very hard, Gibbs. I don't think you've been doing your best. But you can't pick a team and start to doubt it halfway through the game, can you?"

"We'll get him," Gibbs said.

"I won't hesitate."

"I know." Gibbs' pistol was still centered on Gray's chest, but the tone was understanding.

Gray lowered the rifle and leaned it back against the wall. Then he stepped close to McGee. Very close, and looked up into his eyes.

"No hard feelings, McGee," he whispered, friendly and serious and so clearly unfeeling it sent a chill down Tim's spine. "But it's important to make sure the team is motivated."

McGee swallowed. But he hadn't worked eight long years with Gibbs for nothing. He may not be completely fearless, but he could handle himself around an enraged killer. "We didn't know he was here. Gibbs didn't know."

"I believe you, McGee." Gray stepped past him, heading toward the couch. "That's what concerns me."

Gibbs reholstered his pistol as Gray sat next to Tony. 

"Hello, Ziva," Gray said, She just looked at him, eyes dark. He didn't seem to mind.  "How was your day, Tony?"

"Exciting."

"I bet."

Tony looked down at his hands, gripping each other tightly. "You don't have to threaten us. We're on your side."

"I would never threaten any of you, Tony. But I do believe in clear communication."

Uncomfortable silence. Gray just sat there, calm and indifferent and relaxed on the couch.

"You staying here?" Gibbs asked.

Silence, for a moment. He's not going to answer, Tony thought. Same as the day we met him. We're nowhere -

But then Gray answered. As if he always had. "I've got a second location. Kort's gone back to the Agency to check it out. If it's clean we'll move there." Gray paused. "Who else is here?"

"Alex and two of the younger kids are downstairs. Cassie was patrolling outside last I knew."

Silence.

"What did you mean, he's gone?" Ziva, testing the waters. "On the phone?"

"Diablo is gone. Or in the process of leaving."

"What makes you so sure?"

"He's paranoid about security. And he knows that we would find and kill him if he stayed."

"And the agents he's been working with, you think they went with him?"

Gray tipped his head a bit. Amused again. "No."

"You think he killed them."

"He's not nearly as fond of cops as I am. And they would have realized who he is soon enough, if they hadn't already."

"Cassie said the cartel doesn't want to piss off the US agencies. But you think he'll turn on the American agents he's been working with?"

Gray shrugged. "How pissed is the FBI going to be? For O'Donnell to have slipped in unnoticed means the people he was with were keeping things to themselves. They'll assume anyone who was working with him was dirty. Not something the FBI will want to write a press release about. But Diablo would kill them anyway, because he's against the rails. He doesn't care about pissing off the FBI. He's probably moved to the top of Londono's hit list with this stunt, if he wasn't there already."

They sat silent for several moments, absorbing a whole speech from Gray.

Gibbs beat Ziva to the question. "Then why did he do it?"

Gray looked at Gibbs for a split-second. It was the first time his eyes had even wandered that way since he walked in. "Because it might have worked."

Gibbs felt his anger surge. It wasn't the fact that the kid had come into his house and pointed a weapon at the youngest, most vulnerable member of his team. Or that he'd vaguely threatened them all. It was this. That Gibbs hadn't even shot him for that and the kid still didn't fucking trust him.

"Might have _worked_?"

Gray's head tilted a bit, as if he was listening to something beautiful, like a symphony. As if he wanted to savor Gibbs' anger.

"He had fun today," Gray said simply. "And he probably thinks that if he gives us to Londono he would be forgiven. For this and his side business in Africa. Londono doesn't tolerate freelancers, or unnecessary risk. But for Diablo that's where all the fun is."

Gibbs leaned forward, seething. "But _you_ could get him forgiveness. Want to tell me why Londono cares so much about a bunch of punk kids?"

Silence. And Gibbs lost it. "You think we're not doing all we can? I'd like to know how the hell you expect me to protect you when you don't tell us a goddamn thing."

Gray still wouldn't look at him. His eyes scanned the bookshelf to his left, as if he was thinking about his bedtime reading. As if Gibbs had just offered him some ice cream. "What exactly do you need to know?" he said lazily. "The cartel is looking for us. I'd appreciate a heads up if any of its top lieutenants fly into town, or set up a joint Colombian-American team to hunt us down. Mental retardation isn't listed in your medical file, though, so I'd assumed you had already grasped that."

"And I was supposed to be in touch - how?"

"What does that matter? You didn't have the intel. You didn't care to make sure you got it." Gray looked at him, finally. But only for a moment. His eyes shifted indifferently from Gibbs to Tony. "And if you did have the information, willful ignorance isn't my problem. You knew how to find me if you wanted to."

* * *

  _a/n: Any readers more knowledgeable in Spanish than Google Translate are welcome to step forward! But, for those like me who know nada, the glossary for this chapter:_

_No sé qué decir. No sé qué iba a hacer: I don't know what to say. I don't know what he would do._

_Bueno, no digas eso. Gray ya está enojado: Well, don't say that. Gray's already angry._

_Diego no iba - : Diego would not -_

_Eso no importa. Haz lo que quieras: That doesn't matter. Do what you want._

_Hermano: Brother, and term of endearment between very close friends._


	23. Daniel

Gibbs stood up and walked away, before he started to yell. 

He picked up the portable phone to dial Fornell instead, letting him know that Fred Arena, and probably the rest of Dargas's unit, was in trouble. He had the shortest conversation he'd ever had with Tobias and when he hung up and turned back around they were all still sitting as he'd left them.

Why he was still beating his head against this wall he didn't know. Gibbs was a cop, and military, and Gray loathed both of those things. Gray looked at all male authority figures with suspicion, and probably instinctive fear, even though he never showed it. Gibbs screamed male authority, even when he wasn't trying to. It may be impossible for the kid to ever really trust someone like Gibbs.

He'd thought once that the few things that connected them, that they had in common, would be enough. Enough for some kind of understanding. But they weren't.

It made it harder, that Gray couldn't trust him, but not impossible. He would have to rely on whatever Kort and Tony and Holly could do to make sure Gray was alright. Gibbs would get what information he needed from Gray through Tony or Kort to pursue the cartel. And he would simply let the kid go. You can't protect someone who doesn't want your protection. You can't force trust. Hell, given what Gray had been through it felt cruel to try.

Tony was standing, walking toward him. 

"I need to talk to you," Dinozzo said, and walked by, toward the back porch.

Gibbs glanced between McGee, still sitting in the kitchen chair, and Ziva and Gray on the couch. McGee looked like hell. An interrogation like that, however brief, would shake almost anyone. "McGee, get back to the Navy Yard. Try to reconstruct O'Donnell's movements from the flight that went into Dulles."

McGee nodded gratefully, picking up his coat and turning toward the door.

"Agent McGee," Gray called.

Tim paused, turned back, and reached up automatically to catch what Gray had thrown at his head. It was a cell phone - an old one.

"Number's on the back," Gray said.

McGee programmed the number of his "new" cell into Gibbs' portable phone. The boss shoved a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers scribbled on it into Tim's hand and literally pushed him out the door. 

Finally Gibbs looked at Ziva and Gray, both of them sitting irritatingly calm and collected on the couch. He pointed at Gray and let his pissed-off state of mind come through clearly. "Touch my rifle again and I will shoot you." Then he followed Dinozzo out to the back deck.

Tony was leaning against one of the railings, graceful lines and earnest persuasion, all charm as he turned to Gibbs. This was Dinozzo's version of guilt. He'd been gearing up for this performance alright, probably for months. "I sent Cassie toward the front of the house," he said cheerfully. "It's possible she has the same superpower hearing Gray does, though, so - "

"What do you want, Dinozzo."

Tony braced his arms behind him on the wooden railing, like he was steadying himself in a storm. "You can't give up on him, Boss."

"Excuse me?"

"He wouldn't, you know, that threat . . . He doesn't know any other way to protect them - "

"I know why he did it, Tony."

"Yeah. Well, I think he's just freaked out by what happened today. O'Donnell scares them."

Gibbs crossed his arms over his chest.

Tony looked away and moved his head up, oddly, like he was working a kink out of his neck. "Alright. It freaked me out too."

You could say that. You could also say that Dinozzo had been pacing and shouting and stomping around like a good old boy whose darling little girl had snuck out to drink beer and play chicken. It was the first time Gibbs had seen it - what Tony would be like as a father.

Good. And loud.

"Yeah well, Dinozzo. That's why we don't get personally involved."

An awkward nod. "It wasn't until after Gray was held by the FBI. I wanted to let him know his information helped. And I tried to see how the kid I put in rehab was doing but he'd checked himself out, against advice. Thought I'd find out what happened."

Yeah. That was nice. The kind of impulse Gibbs could put away though, because as Gray had so determinedly pointed out, he was _desensitized_.

Gibbs preferred bastard.

And it didn't change the fact that there were damn good reasons for not getting personally involved. Just like he had good reasons for backing off from a kid who definitely did not want his input in the first place. "I don't care, Dinozzo."

That hadn't come out exactly right.

Gibbs waved a hand. "I don't mind." Somebody had to stay in touch with the kid. He didn't want to scare Dinozzo off. But . . . "You do an end run like that around me again and you're fired."

Tony went on as if he hadn't heard him. "I showed the sketch we had around a few - "

"Schools," Gibbs broke in impatiently. "You told us how you would find him. And I explained to you why you shouldn't. Don't ever ignore my orders. I give you one you can't live with, you come talk to me. Shouldn't have to be telling you this ten years in, Dinozzo." He took a step toward the door. "But it's done. Just don't do it again."

He reached out for the handle.

"Boss, don't - Gibbs! Please."

" _What_."

"Look, I remember. You thought it wasn't safe for him, and not worth it for us, right? Because you thought he would come find you when he was ready. But you were wrong," Tony said cautiously. "He wasn't ever going to come to you. You don't understand him, Boss."

He fucking well knew that. He also knew Tony was delusional if he thought _he_ understood that kid. Dinozzo had no understanding of what Gibbs did recognize in Gray. The violence, and the kind of loss that could burn you to nothing, leave nothing of you. Even the ability to feel in the same way.

But that hadn't turned out to be a good foundation for a working relationship between him and the kid. Go figure.

"So why don't you enlighten me."

Tony ignored the harsh tone. Tried again. "Look, Gibbs. You don't - Ah, you don't know -  "

So Dinozzo was at a loss to explain all the things that Gibbs did not understand, or know. And Gibbs had waved good-bye to his last shred of patience five miles back. Everyone was shaken, packed in and around his house like explosive sardines. None of them needed any more drama.

"Spit it out, Dinozzo. We've got work to do."

"He's never met anyone like you, Gibbs," Tony said flatly. "He needs time. He needs you to be patient."

Anyone like him? Gibbs had snapped the necks of two unarmed men within hours of meeting the kid. He knew that should be frightening. But Gray met and tangled with people a hell of a lot more extreme than Gibbs, so that didn't wash.

Did it?

The other killers in Gray's life probably hadn't been interested in earning the kid's trust. So there was that. But time? It'd been nine months. It wasn't like Gibbs went around killing people for fun on the odd afternoon. And he'd been careful to never lose control in front of Gray. Not at the CIA debrief, not even with the out of control FBI agents.

Gibbs crushed a spike of frustration before his second could catch it.

He and the kid had talked about the patrol Gibbs killed anyway. Gray understood why he'd done it, Gibbs was sure of that. There wasn't anything more he could do to explain himself. And he didn't see how more time would make a difference.

Tony was staring at him, the look frustrated. "Don't you - Gibbs, the one adult he trusts most in this world is Kort. Kort!"

Gibbs rolled his shoulders. If they were standing out here so that he could admire another temper tantrum, or more of Dinozzo's juvenile posturing with Kort, so help him . . .

"So help me Dinozzo, if this goes back to your pissing contest with Kort I'm going to deck you." And he'd stay on the deck for a good long time.

"Yeah, fine - we're besties with Kort now, I forgot." Tony paced, distracted and tense and unhappy. 

When it came to the things deep down, neither of them was good at saying the words. Or very motivated to try. They let people assume there wasn't anything more to them. The bastard. The frat boy. Neither broke the habit unless it was something that needed to be said. Gibbs could count with the fingers on one hand the number of times it'd ever been necessary between them.

But this was apparently one of them. He forced himself to relax, and leaned back against the railing. Gibbs could wait. If only because he knew that his second would be a distracted wreck until it was addressed, whatever it was.

Dinozzo looked out into the black canvas of the backyard. "Do you know why I became a cop?"

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. Hardly anyone knew the answers to the real questions about Dinozzo. And Tony was well aware of that. He wasn't expecting a reply.

"When I first went to school I was too short to be on the ball team. My school had a really good team."

Tony was a kid when he first left home, Gibbs knew that.

And it finally sunk in. He didn't know why it hadn't before. The same information, a different angle, and the puzzle fit.

For all that he'd always been independent, Gibbs had rarely in his life been totally on his own, and never as a child. His father had tried to take care of him, much as Gibbs rebelled. And then the Corps, and then his family, and then the wives. Franks and NCIS. Never perfect, sometimes not even okay. But something was always there. So reliably that he'd never questioned what would have happened to him if nothing was.

Gibbs looked Tony over, as he had a thousand times before, trying to see with fresh eyes. It wasn't loss that he was looking at, it wasn't like anything that he really knew. It was a person built in a different way to him.

"But I liked sports and everybody had to have an extra-curricular, so they let me help out. I was the coach's assistant. Helped him get everything ready, helped him pick up after, do stats breakdowns in his office, stuff like that. He was a retired cop. Great ball skills. Had fun with the guys on the team. He was tough, didn't take any crap. But everybody loved him anyway."

Dinozzo paused. "I'd been his assistant for three weeks when I got a call down to the dean's office. Coach was there, and the school nurse. They were concerned." Tony huffed a laugh. "It was a good school, they took care of the kids there. So, you know . . . and he'd had thirty years on the force, twenty as a detective in Chicago. Nothing slipped through the cracks on that team."

Tony folded his arms over his chest. "They wanted to know if I'd had any bad experiences. Thought I might have been abused. Coach noticed I was fine with the guys on the team, but when it was just him and me I shut down. He didn't understand it." He glanced to Gibbs, standing still and solid and absolute on the other side of the dark patio. "I was never abused. I'd just never met a man like that."

Dinozzo looked at him for a beat. Like Gibbs would understand now. Gibbs understood that he was the coach. And apparently, a young Dinozzo wouldn't relate to him either, any more than Gray. He understood that Tony was telling him he didn't count neglect as abuse, and Gibbs wasn't invited to go anywhere near that anyway.

But that's about all he got out of it. Dinozzo had definitely never avoided Gibbs, so somewhere along the line he must've gotten over it.

 _He's never met anyone like you . . . just never met a man like that_.

"A man like what?"

"He was . . . pure." Dinozzo smiled. "He'd laugh till he cried if he heard me say that, but it's true. He was reliable. Honest. Never saw him anything but sober - he didn't have to be drunk to have a good time. Had probably seen some serious shit, but he still loved life. Loved his wife, didn't chase other women because he honestly didn't want them. Spent time with his kids because he honestly liked them. And his team too. There were a few kids there who really did need help, and he helped them out. Just his existence - it stood for something really good."

Tony paused, looking down at the railing to pick at the loose paint.

"It intimidated the hell out of me. When I was thirteen I knew how to mix cocktails and how to lie, and that's it. I'd never really believed there was anything else, I thought anything more reliable was kid's stuff. Like Santa Claus. I didn't know how to be honest. Was dead certain Coach wouldn't like me if I ever was."

Dinozzo paused, and left off examining the wood under his hands to turn his attention to the yard, studying the oak that dominated it. Gibbs' eyes never wavered from his profile.

"So I went mute when he was around," he continued. Tony's voice was loose, a shade too animated, and Gibbs could tell he was unsettled. It took a few years, but these days Gibbs could tell. "Didn't know what to say. He turned every role model I'd ever had on their heads, and I was too . . . I don't know, awe's not the right word. I just didn't want to taint him. We were from different worlds. I thought it was safer to keep it that way."

Tony cocked his head. Shifted his gaze to the evergreens. "Eventually I got to know him and relaxed. Tried to shock him for awhile." He grinned. "Now I know what his beat must have been like I can see how pathetic that probably was. After awhile the intimidation turned into hero-worship, I guess. He laughed it off. I don't think he ever really understood what he was to me. But that doesn't matter. You just need to give the kid time, Boss." A pause. "You've got to _give_ him your time," he said seriously.

Gibbs shook his head. Tony still idolized the men he looked up to. Men who were like the father he'd wanted, and never had. Men who showed up. He tended to believe they could do anything. Sometimes that kind of blindness to his faults, to any limitation really, worked in Gibbs' favor. But not always.

Gibbs knew exactly why that coach laughed off the hero worship he got. Because it was laughable. "I'm not - " Gibbs huffed softly. He couldn't actually let himself laugh. Dinozzo was rarely this serious. 

And Gibbs knew that he was a good team leader. And maybe sometimes, in the past, he'd done things that looked impressive. Heroic to other people.

But never with Gray. He'd sucked that kid into a nightmare in Colombia - Gibbs had no illusions at all about what it cost the boy to kill that patrol. And when they'd gotten back to DC, what had he done for him? Held him down, when Ducky treated him. Posted bail, when the kid was trying to save his friend's life. He'd watched, with those FBI agents. Watched until it went way too far.

It had bothered him to see the kid attacked. To hold him down, and watch him walk away. But Gray was right - Gibbs hadn't actually lost sleep over any it. Not since Colombia, when the kid was wounded, in danger and in pain, and Gibbs was helpless to stop it. Except it had never really been Gray's scream that reached him, had it? It was the echo of his girl's cries that Gibbs heard, a child long gone.

It wasn't that he didn't feel anything. He cared about his job. About his team. It was just that things didn't go as deep, after Kelly died. Nothing but his anger had ever reached him in the same way. He' failed to protect the boy in his care. Had failed the civilians who died in the fire set to rescue him - children, some of them, and plenty of defenseless women, maybe their mothers. That made him angry. But it hadn't gutted him, not like it did Tony and Ziva. Nothing could break him after his family was taken from him. That level of pain, and of happiness too, it was like they had been burned away.

In that one respect, Gibbs knew he was every bit as invincible - as untouchable - as Tim and Tony believed him to be.

Maybe Dinozzo was right. Maybe he should have tracked the kid down when they got back to DC, forced the contact. But Gibbs hadn't. And he couldn't imagine that it would have made much of a difference.

"Dinozzo - he doesn't even like the idea of heroism. If I was one he wouldn't be impressed - "

"No," Tony said patiently. "He loves the idea of heroes. What he doesn't like is that it's such a pile of shit. Because where he's from they don't exist, not any more than Santa. All he had to do was open his eyes and look around to see that heroes are so much bullshit. But now he's met you, and he's confused."

Tony was laying it all out there. He really believed what he was saying, and Gibbs wasn't into mocking his people when they'd laid themselves bare. But Dinozzo must have been watching Excalibur again, or maybe Lord of the Rings. The fantasies.

"I haven't done anything for him," Gibbs said.

"You have. You've been there. You can't let him - it doesn't matter if he doesn't trust you with everything. You don't understand what it means that he trusts you at all, someone who really has power over him. That's fucking terrifying Gibbs, if you've never done it before. He's working up the nerve to throw himself off a cliff. It takes time. You just have to be there. You have to let him try."

Gibbs sighed reluctantly. He understood what Tony was saying. But that didn't mean he was the right person for the job - not for someone like Gray. And the kid had made that pretty clear. "I'm not your coach, Dinozzo. I'm not . . . pure." And Gray was well aware of that. Probably understood it better than the agent standing in front of him.

Tony may have been self-centered when he was young, hollow, even. But he'd never blurred the line. Not like Gibbs, or Ziva. That's not who Tony was. Not even when he stared it in the face, or wore its mask. It wasn't in him.

Gibbs may have pulled himself back from it, but he knew what evil was. Knew that he carried the potential for it, even if he chose a different path. There were times when he was tempted. When he got confused. There had been days . . .

"You're not perfect." Tony broke the odd, solemn quiet. "But that's not the same thing. Look, he doesn't know what to say to you. He doesn't know . . . he's not sure that you'll be able to handle it. Who he is. Just be patient, alright? By the time I left that school I'd talked Coach's ears off. I knew that I could never be that man. Really be like him. But I also knew that I wanted to be as close as I could." Dinozzo looked away suddenly at that. Coloring, maybe, but it was too dark for Gibbs to see.

"Dinozzo - " Gibbs rolled his eyes. He couldn't believe he was being suckered into this. "You're a good man."

A tepid grin. "Thanks Boss. You can be sure I'll tell Ziva you said so." He shrugged. "I know I'm not bad. But I'm not Santa Claus either."

Gibbs kept staring. Surely he was not Santa Claus in this scenario.

Dinozzo glanced at him, grinned for real. And squinted back into the dark. "Gibbs . . . compared to the men he's known, you are. And on top of that, you're real. Better than Santa," he said, and nodded decisively. Absurdly.

Gibbs turned to see Tony better. He wasn't perfect, far from it, and if anyone really knew that it was Tony. He'd walked out on the team so many times. Walked out on so many women . . . he hadn't deserved their loyalty in the first place. "I'm a bastard. I've killed defenseless men practically in front of him. I've been divorced three times - "

Tony cut him off. "Not going to argue with the bastard part. You wouldn't be any use to him if you were nice anyway. But you killed to keep us safe. To keep us from having to do it. And you were faithful to all those women, I bet. Right through the end."

Gibbs didn't say anything. Because of course he was. But trying to protect a child, being faithful to your wife - those weren't the standard for good. Not getting the kid into trouble, not marrying those women in the first place, stringing them along for selfish reasons - that would have been a hell of a lot better than what he'd done.

"You don't get it, and you probably never will, Gibbs. Because you believe in good people and you always have. . . . Then, course you do," Dinozzo trailed off, talking himself in circles. "You're one of them."

"Dinozzo," Gibbs rubbed a hand over his face. For crying out loud. "You believe in good."

Gibbs had to lean in, hold himself still to catch Dinozzo's reply.

" . . . I believed in my coach. I believe in you, most of the time." Tony frowned. "But I know there are places where good doesn't exist. I'm pretty sure they outnumber the rest. Just give him some time to get over the shock, Gibbs. Took me a year to even warm up to Coach, and compared to Gray my life's been a fairy tale. You just have to be patient, alright? You just have to listen to him. You're good at that, when you want to be. Just give him the time."

Tony left him on the deck.

**x**

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

It took Gray a moment to respond, like his mind had been elsewhere.

Was he worried that he had torched his bridge with Gibbs?

Gibbs had been angry, no doubt about that.

And Tony had been worried about Gibbs being angry. There had been a lot of tension in the atmosphere.

She couldn't tell if Gray was worried, though, much less about what. Not any more now than on the day she met him.

"I smell coffee," he said.

Ziva nodded, remembering the cups of it he'd consumed back at the ghost base. "Of course. Where there is Gibbs, there is coffee."

She made the tea in the microwave and set the two mugs down on the kitchen table when she was done, along with what remained of a carton of milk.

Gray dumped the last of that into his mug, wrapped one hand around the warm cup and rested his head on the other. He looked tired, she decided.

"I thought the operation today was well-handled," Ziva said. "Even though it was unfortunate that it was necessary. Thank you for calling me - it is good that we were there. The photos have already proven to be useful."

Gray considered the cracked glaze on the white cup. It had an old-fashioned blue sailboat on it, and the name of a sailing school in New Hampshire.

The silence was very strange now, since Gibbs and her partner had excused themselves so awkwardly. Ziva was continually thankful that she did not have their tempers.

"Tony and Gibbs are . . . upset that the situation put you in danger. Angry that there was nothing they could do about it. But they are also impressed by how prepared you were, and how well it was handled." Ziva paused. "It may take them some time to remember to say that, however."

Gray shifted. Looked at her piercingly. "Gibbs pays his debts whether he's angry or not."

"Yes," she said evenly. "He will always do his best to protect you."

Gray nodded. Not as if he were reassured, really. More like that was the correct answer.

"Cop said Tony's pissed she didn't tell him the plan up front."

He was always gathering intel, she thought. Checking the team for cracks. It was in the nature of a leader.

"Tony has already gotten over that. But he would also protect you whether or not he was angry."

"You're not pissed she didn't want you to call Gibbs?"

"We understand your reasoning. That goes a long way."

Gray sipped his coffee and fell silent. He was done.

Her turn to probe.

"You didn't want us to call Gibbs in order to compartmentalize information," Ziva said slowly. "In the uncertainty of the first few hours. To contain the leak, if possible, and to preserve this as a separate place, perhaps a safe one. We had the same policy at Mossad, to compartmentalize. A sensible precaution."

Gray just looked at her.

He never gave anything away, of course. Good instincts.

And effective training.

Ziva swirled her cup of tea, cool now, and took a sip. Pushed on.

"Is that where you learned the theory, also? A Mossad instructor?"

Gray's strange clear eyes showed nothing.

"Common sense, isn't it?" he said eventually.

"It goes against instinct for most people," she noted. Ziva met his gaze then, and held it for what felt like a long time. Waiting for him to answer, really answer, if he would.

"An instructor like Ori, you mean?"

Ziva stilled, cold even at the mention of that woman's name, and then nodded.

"She was in the camp a few months, one summer. They brought her in to assist their interrogators. To train them."

Ziva's voice was scratchy. She cleared her throat. "And you?"

"No. I met her. Watched. It was the people she trained I learned from."

Was that any better?

No.

"You are very good," she said idly. "I would not have known, except that I heard you say her name. When you were – when you had that fever, and you were ill."

Gray was silent.

"You said her name when the medical staff held you down . . . The things you watched her do must have been frightening."

Ori had not actually been that extreme when she was Ziva's commanding officer, even if her orders had been dangerous. But then, working for Mossad probably did not develop exactly the same skill set that a cartel would.

He didn't respond at all.

Ziva turned back to watching her cup, specks of loose tea dancing senselessly through the pale liquid.

She would apologize to him, to this boy. Say she was sorry that she had known what that woman was, what she was capable of, and yet let her walk out into the world. To continue on her terrible path.

Apologies did not absolve wrongdoing. But it was a step on the road to reconciliation, wasn't it? And Ziva needed to reconcile this, for her own sanity.

"I am sorry that I did not stop her when I had the chance to. I could have spared you that. I should have."

He was quiet. Not looking at his coffee, or the table, or out the window. He stared at her.

And then.

"She's dead, you know."

Ziva jerked, slopping tea on the table. "No. I - how do you know that?"

"Kort killed her. Or maybe it was one of his people . . ." Gray broke off, as if trying to remember. "Not sure. She's gone though." He smiled a little. "Kicked it."

Ziva stared back at him, and felt nothing. Empty of anything except some vague relief that such a woman was no more.

"Good," she said finally.

Gray nodded. They were quiet for awhile. Peaceful.

"I've killed more kids than you."

Ziva looked up sharply. "What?"

He watched her for a long moment, empty eyes like mirrors.

And then he stood. "I'm going to check on the ones downstairs."

He slipped down into the basement, to the other children there.

**x**

When Gibbs walked in he found Tony and Ziva at the table, a mug of milky coffee between them.

"How long do we think until Kort comes back?" Tony asked.

Gibbs shook his head. Poured himself a fresh mug of black and looked at his watch. It was one in the morning.

He was about to tell his agents to go out and relieve Cassie when Gray reappeared from the basement and moved swiftly out the backdoor. But something followed him up the stairs. A soft high pitched voice that grew into noises of distress.

Crying.

All three of them stood up at once. And then eyed each other. Probably not good for three strangers to go down there, not if the goal was to soothe a nightmare.

Ziva informed them that she would go, and was almost to the steps when Cassie darted around her.

"I have this," she said. And closed the door in Ziva's face.

They stared at it. And then Tony tugged at her sleeve. "C'mon," he said, and led her outside.

The two of them sent Gray in a moment later. He looked at the basement door and headed in the opposite direction - toward the couch.

"You want this?" Gibbs gestured at the coffee. But when Gray reached out for it Gibbs slid it away. "I'll heat it up."

He carried two mugs into the living room a minute later and set one down in front of the kid.

A good amount of time had passed before Gibbs chuckled softly to himself, and Gray looked up.

Gibbs shook his head. "Thought of a nice neutral question to ask, but I think I already know the answer."

Gray turned the mug resting on his thigh. "Me too."

"What's yours?"

"How'd you get him to tell you his name is Alex."

Gibbs leaned back in his chair. "And the answer?"

"Want to say you threatened to blow off his other arm. But I can't picture it."

"Just asked him, actually."

Gray shook his head. "Figures," he said softly.

"That how he lost his arm? Got blown off?" Grenade, maybe. Or a mine, triggered close.

"Is that your nice neutral question?"

Gibbs smiled. "No."

Gray gestured expansively. An invitation.

"I was gonna ask why you call him Truck."

"So what's the answer."

"That I don't want to know."

Gray didn't get it.

"That was the answer with Cop," Gibbs reminded him.

The kid considered his coffee again. "For awhile Tomas was the only one tall enough to reach the pedals. He's always been large. And he likes to drive."

"Was he driving Cassie's SUV today?"

A nod.

"Heard he was pretty good."

"He's the best."

Gray said it naturally, as if it was obvious. _He's the best._  

The same way Gibbs thought of Abby in the lab, or McGee behind a computer.

Gray, Cass, now Tomas. It wasn't just their skills - it was the aptitude. It wasn't normal. Gibbs wondered if they had been screened, or recruited somehow, and by whom.

Gray looked at him again, and Gibbs could tell he knew what he was thinking. More questions. None of them neutral.

Well, nothing ventured. "So what's O'Donnell after, exactly?"

Gray set his coffee on the table next to him and slouched back into the couch. Either steeling himself or taking a nap. 

Give him time, Dinozzo said. You don't know what it means that he trusts you at all.

Patience. Right. 

Gibbs waited.

"What's with the coffin?"

Bargaining again? Fine with him. "It's for a friend."

Gray fixed him with a steady look.

It was the same look Ziva gave to rednecks and effeminate men. Trying to be open-minded. Maybe figure things out. And failing in the face of something so bizarre.

"You got him on ice or something?"

"He's not dead yet."

The look turned speculative. Like he was wondering if Gibbs had Mike tied up in the attic.

"He's sick," Gibbs clarified. "Doesn't have long."

The stare stayed on him for awhile, unreadable now. Gray's eyes wandered away before he spoke again, but he didn't answer the question Gibbs had asked. He went back to one Dinozzo had never had answered. "Cop said to tell you - she doesn't really know if he's her father."

Well, hell.

"She doesn't like to think about it," Gray added indifferently.

A cool undercurrent of warning there. _Don't bring it up again._

Gladly, as long as it didn't get in the way of keeping her safe.

"Can she ask her mother?"

Gray tilted his head, considered the ceiling. "Her mom's the one said it's possible."

A pause.

Gibbs had the distinct feeling that Gray was hovering. There were thoughts in there, thinking about coming out.

You have to give him time.

Gibbs watched his coffee go cold.

"You know what's the worst strike against her?"

Gibbs waited.

"Cop is smart."

" . . . Yeah?"

"Really smart. Like hardly anybody else. Diablo's the same."

Gibbs rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling restless. He wanted to deny that, the reasoning and the likelihood of it.

The thing was . . . she really was brilliant. It was distinctive. The sort of trait that would be noticeable in a parent, and passed down to a child. Sure as Kels had looked at him with his own blue eyes.

He needed to say something.

"Even if O'Donnell is her biological father," Gibbs said steadily, "it doesn't change who she is."

"Your Daddy must've been a nice guy."

Gray didn't expect him to respond. Maybe that's why Gibbs did. "He's . . . a good man."

Mild surprise. Because Gibbs was ancient, and his dad was still alive? Or because he didn't think his father was Nice Guy of the Year material? He didn't know why that would be surprising to anyone, though. Gibbs was hardly racking up the Nice Guy prizes either.

Gray was just sitting there.

"We argued a lot, when I was a kid," Gibbs offered casually. The more information he gave, the more he tended to get. "Never really got back on track."

Gray laughed.

"What'd I say?" Gibbs said quietly. Pretending he hadn't just compared Jackson Gibbs to a man known for good reason as Devil.

Gray waved a lazy hand, a nothing.

Gibbs waited.

Waited . . .

. . . waited.

"There was this kid, at the camp. Liked to argue, be a smart ass. Like you, probably."

Gibbs' lips quirked. He'd been mouthy when he was a kid, no denying that. And his willful ignorance now was pretty transparent. But Gray was talking anyway, talking about O'Donnell, so Gibbs didn't much care.

"This kid . . ." Gray's voice was considering, distant. "He wasn't good at anything. Couldn't hit a target, couldn't run two miles."

Wherever he was, Gray had gotten lost there. He fell silent.

A smart ass? Was he talking about Diego?

"He was funny?" Gibbs said slowly.

"Don't know. Kid said something to Diablo once." A puzzled frown. Like saying something to O'Donnell was hard to fathom. "Think he talked when he was nervous."

Hesitation, just for a moment, and Gibbs watched him closely. He got the feeling Gray was editing something out.

"What happened?" Gibbs asked softly.

A sideways glance, and Gray shrugged. "Normally he likes them to live. But Diablo was feeling good that day, I guess. When he was done he pulled the kid over to this tool shed. Told him to wait and went in. Kid was all fucked up, but he still just stood there, waiting for him. Diablo's good like that." A pause. Letting Gibbs absorb the scene. "When he came out he pushed him up against the shed, and he nailed him to the wall." Gray glanced at Gibbs again. Smiled a little, chillingly, and gestured with his hand, opening a palm. "Actual nails."

McGee's photos were fresh in his mind's eye, and Gray was deliberately painting a picture. Gibbs pictured it all too easily.

But Gray wasn't done. "Diablo waited, you know, for a crowd. And then he cut out his tongue. No more smart ass remarks. No more smart ass."

Gray was trained in manipulation, in interrogation, and he was good at it. He knew how to snag you, how to make you feel what he wanted you to feel. Gibbs knew that. But it didn't mean he was immune to it. He had no doubt the story was true, the parts that were said, and what went unsaid. He could see it all. Could hear it. He kept a straight face, aware of Gray watching him. But in his own mind he recoiled.

"Funny though," Gray continued idly. "Kid turned out to be tougher than he looked. When we pulled him down he wasn't even dead yet." Gray cocked an eyebrow at him, picked up his coffee and took a sip. "That was the surprising part."

Daddy must have been a nice guy.

And the message was clear. If Diablo did that to some random kid, what would he do -

"We won't let him get to Cassie," Gibbs said, grim determination coloring the words. "But she needs to be careful. If he can find her and prove that she's his daughter it may briefly give him some leverage."

O'Donnell could get close to her, if he could find her. If he was really determined, and depending on how deep he was in at the FBI. He could make an accusation of a kidnapping, maybe, have her taken into custody - that's how Gibbs would work it. Then DNA. Parental rights, federal protection. It wouldn't hold up for long, but it wouldn't need to. It could give him enough room to grab her and run.

Except Gibbs had told her that wouldn't happen.

A little premature, given he didn't even know where she was right now.

He reminded himself that she'd been carrying the last time he saw her. And sticking close to a whole lot of other people doing the same.

"She told me that he's never hurt her," he probed. Did O'Donnell have a special interest in her? Or was her protection all down to Gray's deal, like she thought?

Gray nodded.

"Those scars she has - ?"

"That wasn't Diablo, not his style. Too messy."

Silence, while Gibbs pondered that. Messy. But not O'Donnell -

"Anyway," Gray volunteered after a moment, and Gibbs narrowed his eyes, wondering instantly whose style they were, "he was just fucking with her today. He doesn't care about her one way or the other. They're not after Cop."

But O'Donnell was after something.

And something had changed for Gray. He was offering Gibbs information, some anyway, about O'Donnell especially. Maybe because Diablo showing up had scared him. Maybe because what Gibbs said about protecting him had finally sunk in.

His gaze sharpened on Gray's profile.

We weren't carrying anything they really want . . .

. . . I would so like to see Daniel and Sean again.

"Cassie told my agents that her SUV was the least vulnerable car."

Gray swirled his coffee steadily, so that it came just up to the lip of the cup but didn't spill over.

He was ignoring Gibbs. Or, putting an optimistic spin on it, waiting for him to go on.

"That's why her car was the one to stop," Gibbs said.

A nod, maybe.

"She meant that Sean and Daniel weren't in her car. Right?"

Because they were what the cartel wanted. Would fight for. Maybe even forgive for.

Another slow nod.

"They're safe?"

Gibbs waited. He was pretty sure, but -

"My father's name was Daniel," Gray finally said. "He called me the same. They all did. High up."

High up in the cartel.

Damn but he'd been right.

"Your father was Daniel Conlon?"

"Yeah."

"And Sean?"

" . . . He's downstairs."

There was only one boy besides Alex downstairs. The one who was about eight, who'd been there from the beginning. Gibbs thought back to him. Thick shaggy hair, almost hiding big, dark liquid eyes. Delicate build. Shy. He stuck close to one of the girls down there, one with pale skin and hazel eyes about the same age. Last time Gibbs had seen them they were collapsed together on the cot, sleeping off the huge container of eggdrop soup and pile of wontons they'd shared for dinner.

"Why do they want you?"

Gray smiled, in a way. "They don't. Not alive, anyway."

But they hadn't outright attacked. There'd been a veiled warning, threat and bribary. No violence.

They wanted somebody alive.

"They want Sean."

A calm nod.

"And you don't want to give him to them?"

"He doesn't want to go back," Gray said. Suddenly, absolutely still.

Gibbs looked at the kid in front of him. Really looked. At the fine-boned hands cradling the heavy mug. The thin curve of his shoulders when he leaned forward, the shallow dip of the ear where the lobe met his neck. Almost delicate.

He studied the liquid-gray eyes. They were fixed on the basement door.

"He's your brother," Gibbs guessed.

Gray answered easily, unsurprised. But his posture radiated dread. "Half-way there, Gibbs."

A half-brother? And the reluctance he wasn't bothering to hide - Gibbs was closing in on it, finally, after all this time.

And Gray was going to let him.

Gray got the odd coloring of his eyes from his father, who was dead. Their mother was missing. But someone in that cartel wanted Sean . . .

"Who's his father?"

Nothing. Gray didn't look like he'd even heard him.

Gibbs held onto his patience with both hands.

He was close. Gray was losing the color in his face, not that Gibbs cared. He would pick the kid up and shake the answers out of him if he thought it would get him anywhere. But that wasn't the way forward here.

If he was named for Daniel Conlon . . . he was never going to call this boy Daniel. Gray it was.

"Gray," Gibbs kept it very quiet, and controlled, determined to coax Gray out onto the ice inch by inch. "Listen to me. We'll be in a better position to - "

"Londono."

He waited. But Gray didn't say anything else.

Not Londono's lieutenant. Not Londono's friend.

Londono.

Gibbs leaned forward to set his coffee on the table. And - just briefly - rested his head in his hands.

" . . . Roberto Londono?"

"Yeah."

"The head of the cartel."

"Only one I know."

" . . . He wants his son back," Gibbs said slowly.

"Time to build the dynasty." Very dry.

Was that a joke?

The kid gets funny.

Gibbs sat back, let his head rest on the chair's cushions. The tendons in his neck were screaming.

Roberto Londono's son was in his basement. And Londono wanted him back.

They needed a safe house, definitely. One in Switzerland. And an army of guards. Though that would all be useless if he couldn't keep Gray from bolting.

Roberto Londono. Unbelievable.

"Well," Gibbs sighed, "You do know how to pick them, kid."

"Same to you," Gray said, and tipped up the mug to finish his lukewarm coffee. "But I think you mean my mother knows how to pick them."


	24. Black and White All Over

Gibbs was habitually still, when he was thinking. But when other people went quiet it usually meant they were angry, or scared. 

He let ten minutes pass and the kid didn't so much as breathe. Gibbs' eyes landing on the rifle still leaning against the wall. "I told you I would protect you," he said. "You're not going to scare me off. I don't care who you have in my basement." The look he got back from Gray was uncertain. 

Who could blame him? If Gibbs had any sense at all he'd turn this over to the higher powers, whoever that would be in this case. State Department? Or the Colombian embassy, though he'd be surprised if Londono didn't have pull there. No wonder Kort had wanted to get his affairs in order. Gibbs would have to sit down with the team, let them know what they were dealing with. Speaking of -

"But if you keep pulling guns on my team," he said, "you're going to piss them off."

The phone rang. Gibbs picked it up absently.

"Jethro." It was Fornell. "Most of Dargas' unit is accounted for. Got a few scheduled for witness protection, it'll take some time to go up the chain, get their whereabouts. But there's no unusual surveillance on record for you or your team."

"Good," Gibbs said. His eyes drifted toward Gray's.

"Yeah? What the hell is going on?"

"Thanks, Tobias. I owe you one. Keep an eye on your people."

"You owe me - "

Gibbs hung up. "Looks like O'Donnell kept it quiet," he said. "Until today."

Gray didn't say anything.

"I can arrange a safe house. Bring in guards who - "

"We don't need your protection," Gray said.

Gibbs sat forward and chose his words carefully. Reason would work better than yelling, if anything would work at all. "You're an informant for an NCIS investigation. You're entitled to our help."

"Am I?" Gray asked.

"Yes."

Gray left off Gibbs to consider the far wall. "An informant in an investigation," he said. "So you're not incompetent. You've just been busy, doing other things."

Might as well bite the bullet. "We knew where he was, in South Africa. For brief periods. Knew that he'd flown back to Colombia a few months ago. We had him under surveillance there, a few times."

"You thought you would use him. Let him lead you to the cartel." Gray looked at him unnervingly. The pale eyes were like a brand, peeling back layers of skin. When the kid spoke again it sounded like he was quoting someone else, had said the words many times before. "Everyone has weaknesses. You got fewer than most."

"Don't follow," Gibbs said cooly.

"Arrogant. You think you can play with Diablo. That you can take from him, and he won't take back?" Gray's face was expressionless. "You're wrong."

"My people are safe," Gibbs pointed out. The kid was smart and careful, and had more experience than he should, Gibbs would grant him that. But Gibbs hadn't exactly been born yesterday. "And if you let us, we can protect you, too."

"Protection isn't what I need you for."

Right. Kort and Gibbs, they played offense. Gibbs was supposed to help Kort bring the cartel down. And Gibbs would.

"I told you I would bring them down," Gibbs said. "And I will. But not letting us help you - that's a mistake. Your weakness, and Kort's. Don't take on his bad habits."

There was a car outside, the low hum of a serious engine. The pop of a car door closing in the driveway.

Gray tilted his head. "I'm not. We brought you in. I'm telling you how you can help. But using your resources to guard us would be a waste, one you can't afford with a team as small as yours. Concentrate on the cartel."

"Pretty confident." Gibbs tapped the lip of his coffee thoughtfully. "Sure arrogance isn't your thing? Be easy to pick it up from the CIA . . . or O'Donnell."

The kid grinned, cool. Acknowledging the hit, and the question there, like he was above it all. Like O'Donnell had never touched him.

"You know arrogance isn't Diablo's soft spot," Gray said. 

"So what is it, then?"

Gray looked back at him, as if he was waiting for the answer, too.

"Sex? Insanity?" Gibbs pressed quietly. "Is that what you exploited to make a deal with him?"

Gray narrowed his eyes, pondering the man across from him as if they were sitting in a cafe, having a philosophical discussion. "I don't know. Do you think ambition is insane?"

Gibbs drew his pistol. Ambition? So O'Donnell thought he could use Gray? Maybe use his connection to Sean. And Gray had cooperated?

"Anything can be a weakness, if you approach it the right way," Gibbs said. From the corner of his eye he got the impression the kid already knew how very true that was. 

The backdoor to his house opened. Gibbs raised his gun and switched to a lighthearted tone, speaking clearly to be heard in the next room. "So what's Kort's weakness? Since we're sharing."

The kid smiled oddly, again, and Gibbs' senses perked up. This was not the neutral question he thought it was.

"Fear," Gray said softly. "Same as mine."

Gibbs braced the pistol in his hands, eyeing the back hall. Gray stood up as Kort walked in.  The CIA agent nodded to the boy's look. "It's good."

Damn.

"Let them sleep here," Gibbs said. "You can move to the new location in the morning." In the morning there would be more traffic, and with a good driver behind the wheel, traffic would just make trailing them harder.

Gray crossed to the basement door and, oddly, knocked. He discussed it for ten seconds with Cassie and nodded back at the agents watching from the living room. Gibbs dug out an air mattress and bedding and passed it over, and Gray shut the basement door behind them.

Gibbs called in two guards from NCIS and instructed McGee and Abby to break for the night. Gray was right, in one respect at least. His team was small, and couldn't provide a 24-hour guard if they were also going to pursue the cartel. Not unless they gave up sleep entirely. The backup guards reached his place in less than twenty.

"Ziva, Dinozzo. Go home, get some shuteye." It was 0200. "Be at your desks by 0930."

They nodded and left, subdued. To be taunted by the enemy, and see him slip away. It would wreck havoc on morale.

Finally all of the arrangements had been made, new guard patrolling. Gibbs and Kort were the only ones left. Standing like duelers across from one another in the living room.

"We need to move now," Gibbs said. "Find him and take him out."

Kort shook his head.

Gibbs went on, annoyed. "If O'Donnell brings our connection to Gray and Sean back to the cartel the operation will be blown."

"And we'll tip our hand if we hunt him too obviously," Kort countered. "We should increase our surveillance and try to head O'Donnell off if he approaches Londono. They won't risk electronic or telephone communication for this. But we can't even be sure that Diablo will pass the information on. He's playing his own game now, he may keep it to himself. Besides," Kort pointed out, "Hanlan is coming in tomorrow and we'll be able to review the surveillance we do have with him and Gray. We need to have good information on all of them before we move."

Gibbs stretched and paced into the kitchen, to the coffee machine, just to burn energy. He stared at it, and finally turned it off.

Wait to strike until you have good intelligence. That was the smart way to go, in theory. But if you waited for perfect intel while your enemy burned your house down around you, you'd waited too long. And there was a reason Gibbs never made deals, never stooped to relying on criminals who had decided to rat out their friends. You couldn't trust them, by definition. Even by dirtbag standards they were scum.

Not that Gibbs could claim the high ground on that score, not anymore. AK had been roped in and offered a deal, and now Hanlan from South Africa, and even O'Donnell, in a way. Gibbs and Kort had followed his movements instead of closing in and taking care of the son of a bitch. They'd justified it because they wanted the intel that following O'Donnell could give them.

All his team's intelligence, all their experience hadn't saved them from that temptation. Couldn't erase the fact that the kids' safety, in the end, had been an acceptable sacrifice. Would Gibbs have let O'Donnell walk if Dinozzo had ever been under that man's power? If Ziva had?

No. He would have hunted him down and destroyed O'Donnell like the rabid dog he was.

That was why Gray held a rifle on Tim tonight. Not to make a threat, or because he was rattled. It was clear communication, just like the kid said. Another heart-to-heart. You put mine in danger, when you traded O'Donnell away. How do you like it?

He felt the frustration, the wrongness, build like a wall in his chest. "The longer we wait, the higher the risk, and no guarantee of anything to show for it. Meanwhile that lunatic is out on the streets. The FBI was trying to use O'Donnell the same way you're trying to use Hanlan. This is how they get protection, they slip through the cracks when we _let_ them – "

"That's absurd, there's no comparison," Kort broke in. "The FBI was never in control, they were played from the beginning. O'Donnell is about to skip the country if he hasn't already. The kids will be safe from him then, and we've already learned plenty from the man's movements. He's too valuable to simply eliminate. As for Hanlan, he's been in our custody for months. He's not a threat."

" . . . Yeah." Gibbs had walked to the window and spoken to the cool glass there. Years of bitterness and disillusionment were packed into that one word, folded into it, layer by layer. Kort studied him, wondering how serious this was. Was it normal reluctance, a brief hesitation? Or was Gibbs actually about to pull out? He was relying on Gibbs to come through with the holding space for Hanlan and the two lackeys. The CIA wouldn't allow one of its agents to organize an operation against the cartel under its nose, so he needed NCIS to help him coordinate the surveillance as well. Now Gibbs wanted to back out?

Was he bluffing?

Did Gibbs bluff?

And if the answer was no . . . was it even possible to talk him out of an idea once he'd seized on it? Probably not. He was all noble, incorruptible principle after all. Gibbs operated in a world of black and white - a foreign country, one Kort had never known. And it was all so fragile. Good things were too hard to defend, too easily corrupted and lost.

But Kort knew for a fact that Gibbs had watched it all collapse before. Had watched that world burn, and burned with it, only to build it back up again, like some pigheaded, ridiculous phoenix. It was something Kort could respect, from afar. 

Kort spoke as forcefully as he dared. "We need Hanlan. And he won't be able to lead us down the garden path the way Diablo did the FBI. That's why we have Gray to corroborate. Did you think I was bringing him in just to watch the show? He'll know if anything is too far off – "

"Yeah, I got it." Gibbs was yelling now, or close to it. "The dirtbag gets a nice retirement from the CIA, right? And the kids – " If he kept going he was going to really scream. He threw a hand into the air instead, and turned away. " - I got it."

Kort took a breath. Gibbs was all over the place, spooked from the chaos that had erupted around them today. Startled, probably, into seeing ghosts.

Kort tried to talk him down rationally. The way he would want someone to reassure him, as best as he could tell, if he ever suffered from something like a moral crisis. "Hanlan and his information will help us to keep everyone safe in the long run. O'Donnell isn't the same thing, he wasn't telling the truth, or anything near it. Neither one of them is going to get a nice 'retirement' or anything like it. Look, this isn't your family, Gibbs. Hernandez wouldn't have slipped through either, in the long run we'd have got him."

Quiet. Gibbs stared at the wall.

"Gibbs."

" . . . Get out of my house."

Kort realized, belatedly as usual, that he'd gone too far.

He held up a hand. "Don't be stu– " Somehow he managed to swallow it. "Look. We agree on this. I wouldn't use O'Donnell any more than you would. The FBI doesn't know what its doing. But that doesn't mean that hunting him down now is the smart move."

Gibbs laughed bitterly, quietly. This from a man who defended scum like Hernandez, and offered deals to men who worked for _El_ _Diablo_. "You're a liar, Kort. You telling me if O'Donnell walked in here right now offering information you wouldn't give him a deal? You're always looking for another score, it's a game to you." After what Gray had just revealed about Kort, had hinted . . . it was all even more disgusting than it would normally be. "You told me yourself you would flip him, flip the devil, that's what you said, right? Because you're just that good." Gibbs' voice was cool, floating on terrible calm. Terrible because somewhere in it, lurking in its corners, was rage that couldn't possibly be calm. "And I told you to get out of my house."

Kort hesitated. Letting O'Donnell go was necessary. Hanlan was essential. And Gibbs was essential too. He watched as the other man sat on the couch, ignoring him.

Stay cool, try again. Just lay it out reasonably. "I was spoiling for a fight when I said that. And I got one, if you recall? I wouldn't actually deal with O'Donnell." Kort didn't bother to swear he wouldn't, or to promise, or any of that. Gibbs already thought he was a liar, the man always had. "Beyond everything he's done, O'Donnell's too unpredictable. He's mad, literally insane. It would be useless to even try to deal with him."

Gibbs wouldn't look at him. "So, no madmen, but straight-up evil is alright, that it?" A pause, and then casually, "You make me sick."

Kort looked away. "It's necessary. I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you out of my house."

Kort walked from the kitchen to the front door. It wasn't until his hand was on the knob that Gibbs spoke, tone curious, idle. Wrapping up loose ends?

"Why did you say I was good for him, Kort?"

Kort could tell Gibbs' control was back. The man had regained his black and white - Kort could only hope it wouldn't cost them everything. He stared at the door for a few seconds, and considered just walking through it, walking away. The disappearing act was a real talent of his, before.

But not anymore. He leaned forward, until his head was almost to the wood, and fought the urge to laugh. Gibbs definitely wouldn't like that. But really. How the hell had he gotten here?

Gray, that was how. Manipulative little bastard. And Gibbs, too.

How could the man ask that, anyway? Wasn't someone like Gibbs good for everyone, as long as they fit into his world? Didn't he protect them, and patch up the wounded without even trying? Did he think it was normal, the devotion he got from his agents?

"If you don't want me to protect him from people like that – "

"We can't protect them," Kort said roughly. "Don't fool yourself. I want you to help them survive. And . . ."

Kort was still staring out the window set into the door, face so close to it his voice was softened, and Gibbs lifted his head to look at him. "And when it's over, I want them to forget all this. To be kids, the way it should have been."

"That's not possible."

"Of course it is."

Gibbs grunted, dismissive, and turned his face away. "You forgot your childhood. Didn't have any affect on you?"

"You know it did. I never got out of the shit. But some people do, don't they. They come back from it . . . your specialty, if I'm not mistaken," Kort said flatly. "Look at your team, man." Because Gibbs didn't just build that cozy, simple world around himself, did he? He pulled his people into its embrace.

Gibbs was incredulous again. "You're not serious."

Kort opened the door. The cold air felt good. "I told you that I would do the dirty work, and if you can't stomach it I will. Forget about Hanlan, if that's what you want. I'll handle the interviews, I'll get the intel we need to go down there and assassinate all the bad men. Clean kills. And when it's over you can turn it into a bedtime story for Gray, and for Sean. For the boys they'll be."

Kort slipped away, the door closing behind him with a whisper.

**x**

"McGee!"

"Boss?"

"Where is your team?"

He said your team the way Tim's mother used to say _your_ _father_ when she'd had it.

McGee looked up cautiously, scanning for signs of a fistfight. It was after noon, and Gibbs' first appearance of the day. The boss was rooting through his desk for something, not paying any attention to Tim. Gibbs didn't look like he'd been in a fight. But the last time anyone had seen him he'd been with Kort. And whatever had gone down in the half-day since, Gibbs was definitely pissed about it.

All of the kids were now in mysterious locations that the team didn't know about, and the last of them had apparently left for one of those locations early in the morning from Gibbs' house. The boss had spent the morning coordinating something with Kort and Fornell, though he hadn't exactly been chatty when he'd called in at 0931 to give them instructions.

But it made sense that Gibbs would try to track down those missing FBI agents. McGee and Abby hadn't had any luck at all finding O'Donnell.

"Ziva and Tony left for the airfield twenty minutes ago," McGee said.

Gibbs' team had spent the morning looking over maps and deciding routes, putting all of their considerable experience into keeping three criminals from South Africa safe.

The ironies of the job.

Gibbs grunted irritably and stood up, walking quickly over to McGee's desk. He set a thumb drive down next to Tim's computer as he blew by. "Hard copies of everything on that, McGee. You know the drill."

Tim nodded. No letting the data, in any form, out of his sight. That meant no getting an intern to handle the printing, and no electronic copies saved anywhere, not even in a print job cache. No one but Gibbs' team and the director were to know this surveillance existed, much less lay eyes on it.

The boss disappeared and McGee sighed as he stood, heading for the copy room. Earlier Gibbs said he thought there would be at least fifteen hundred photos, plus documents.

Assuming the printer worked perfectly today it would take about ten seconds to spit out each high-res color image. That made fifteen thousand seconds for the photos alone. Two hundred and fifty minutes. Just over four hours of copy room time.

McGee detoured toward the break room, and coffee.

**x**

Ziva began walking the perimeter of the airfield at 2100. She settled into position on a dark hanger roof at 0030.

Kort's gleaming SUV showed up at 0110. The green and white lights of the transport flight winked out of the black horizon seven minutes later. The wind was cold and steady, pushing roiling clouds to the north and west. She adjusted the sights of her rifle accordingly.

The sky had thrown sleet at her for a solid forty-five minutes. Puddles of water played with the runway lights below, reflecting and bending them, creating the illusion of movement where there was none.

She scanned the runway thoroughly anyway.

Now the clouds were spitting something drier, harsher—fierce little ice crystals that stung her face and gathered on her eyelashes, refusing to melt. Ziva wiped the scope one last time as the plane roared down the runway and taxied to a stop.

She was two hundred and nine yards from the end of the airstrip and the brightly lit hangar where Kort waited, standing like a statue next to the passenger door of the car.

The prisoners disembarked quickly. Through the scope she could see the tiny, glittering missiles of ice landing on the first prisoner's soft brown hair. That was Hanlan. She swept over the rooftops with the scope as he descended from the hatch. Ziva studied windows and doorways, the crevices between buildings, and the pitch-black field beyond the plane. All the vulnerable security points picked out on her first survey of the area hours ago.

Soft hair disappeared into the SUV, and she saw nothing more menacing than still shadows.

The second man had no hair at all. He was completely bald, pale pink skull shiny under the hangar lights. He hunched his shoulders against the wind as Kort's security team hustled him to the car. Ziva swept it all again. The plane, the car, the windows and doorways. Most carefully of all the roofs to each compass point. There was nothing to see but dark machinery and ugly architecture.

The final man was bulky yet hard to see, her view of him blocked by an enormous guard. He was bundled into the car within seconds, followed by his hulking protector, and in an instant the SUV was speeding toward the gate. Her eyes ran up the fences on either side of the road, over the rooftops within a thousand yards in either direction, back to the plane, up ahead to the gate.

The motor of the car faded away and the night was silent again but for the scrape of wind over concrete. Still she followed the taillights with her scope.

When the SUV turned out of the gate, the headlights of a second car flared and began to move. Tony and McGee would follow Kort and the prisoners to the Navy Yard and escort the three men to cells.

Ziva stood, combing ice from her hair. She was going home, to sleep. No one had attacked on her watch. The transfer had been smooth. She had six hours before she was due back at work, unless Gibbs called them in earlier.

If she was lucky her team, the children they danced around, and the American Navy would manage to stay out of trouble for the duration of her nap.

**x**

Gibbs woke at 0530 and knew there would be no more sleep that night. A hard mix of rain and sleet beat against the living room window, steady backdrop to the thousands of surveillance photos that pulsed behind his eyes. McGee had emerged from the copy room with box after box of them.

When the blank faces of three men waiting for interrogation started to push the photos out, he rolled off the couch. It was absurdly early and he took his time getting ready, but was dressed and out the door inside forty minutes.

It was still dark and coming down in sheets when he came to a dead stop behind a long line of cars, brake lights glowing, idling half a block from the Yard's west entrance. An accident up ahead, maybe. The rain was freezing, edging toward sleet, and the streets were laced with black ice.

Gibbs tapped the steering wheel gently, frowning at his watch. It was damn early for a traffic jam, accident or not.

His phone buzzed and he knew as soon as he saw the Caller ID. It was Vance.

Gibbs swerved up onto the road's shoulder and gunned it toward the gate, flipping open the new cell McGee had set him up with the day before. "Yeah."

"Gibbs. Got a situation at the west gate."

"On my way."

Orange cones and a line of Marines in fatigues blocked the turnoff from the main road. They knew him on sight and tried to wave him through, but there were cars everywhere, nowhere to go. Gibbs reached over to the glovebox for his hat and left the Charger on the soggy shoulder, jogging the rest of the way to the scene through the downpour.

Twenty yards up, at the squat little guardhouse, a knot of people - Navy Yard personnel - stood staring at the gate. Gibbs pushed his way to the front and finally stopped.

There were six heads sitting there, set in a line across the road. They looked pristine on the shining black asphalt, like waxy props from a horror movie. Empty eyes and gaping mouths staring back at the quiet crowd.

Vance was standing on his own, to the side, holding a black umbrella. He didn't even glance Gibbs' way when the agent came to stand beside him.

"Two guards on the gate are relieved every morning at 0600," the director said. "The relief found this. Their commander called me."

So a minimum of people knew. Judging by the cordon of men down at the turnoff Vance wanted to keep it that way. 

"Where's the overnight shift?"

"Missing," Vance said. "Find them. And identify those people."

Gibbs watched him walk away, and turned back to the scene.

 _Identify_ _those_ _people_.

He was halfway there already. Three of the victims, a woman and two men, he didn't know. But three he did.

He called Tony first and told him to get the team to the gate. Abby would already be in her lab by the time evidence was ready to be processed, so he woke Ducky up next. Then he dialed Fornell.

Kort was the last call, and the only one not to pick up. Gibbs left a message, telling him to get his ass back to the Navy Yard.

Dargas. Agent Fred. And the feisty CIA lady who'd called herself Courtney Trent, and claimed she worked for ICE. They were dead, heads left like calling cards at the NCIS doorstep.

Gibbs walked in front of them, studying the wounds, eyeing the ground around them. He stopped and squatted down to stare, more closely than he had before, at the unknown woman whose sightless eyes stared back at him.

A severed head was grotesque by nature, but her face was serene. Long dark hair and clear dark eyes. Proud feminine features set in pale, unblemished skin, like the death mask of a mannequin.

She had been beautiful, once. She could have been Ziva's sister.


	25. To the Morgue

"My my." Ducky leaned forward to examine the base of the neck, tipping it forward. "That is interesting."

Gibbs hovered over the ME's shoulder. "Got something, Duck?"

"See there, they've been mounted." Ducky pointed his penlight at the severed head, illuminating the base. It wasn't all arteries and spine, like it should have been. Most of it was covered by a metal square.

Gibbs squinted. "Mounted."

"Mm, to keep them standing upright. Whoever did this wanted the scene to look just right." Ducky left off examining the head to peer up at Gibbs.

"Yeah," Gibbs said lowly. "Roger that."

"Mm." Ducky looked around for his assistant. "Mr. Palmer, it's high time we get these people out of the rain." He stood, knees creaking, and muttered, "One gurney should do it."

**x**

Tim didn't remember every scene they worked, but a few did stand out. The morning they found the heads at the Yard there were spotlights around the gate, already set up when he arrived, throwing the scene into harsh light and shadow. He would always remember how the light caught the gray morning mist, and the dark silhouettes of men in uniform, shifting restlessly, watching the team work.

A close-up of Gibbs, red-faced, yelling into his phone about airports and trains and bus stations.

Tim didn't give the phone clutched in Gibbs' hand good odds for a long life.

And then the way the boss stopped to gesture McGee forward. Gibbs covered the mouthpiece of the cell and told McGee he wanted the scene kept quiet, no leaks, wanted another pair of eyes on the security feed, wanted Tim to run evidence down to Abby's lab, wanted the vics' pictures sent to Fornell and Kort, wanted access to Dargas' and Agent Arena's case files and Bureau activity, wanted a second interview of the relief watch, wanted, and wanted, and wanted.

In McGee's memory, it isn't the words that stand out. It's Gibbs' voice, and the rain rolling down his face, and the blue eyes, fierce and calm. The voice was strong and the instructions were clear and sure, like the sun coming up in the morning. Gibbs didn't ever really hesitate, just like the kid said. No matter what happened, Gibbs knew what to do. Or at least, what he was going to do. And even better for his youngest agent, he knew exactly what Tim should be doing, too. McGee nodded and said yes boss, and ran off to do it.

He remembered seeing Ziva, talking intently to one of the guards. And Tony crouched in a puddle in front of one of the victims. McGee moved quickly past him, didn't really notice what Tony was doing. But the next night, when McGee was finally allowed to collapse into his bed, the images came rushing back, and it was there. The picture of Tony was the last one, kneeling in front of a victim, oblivious to the rain. Staring at a woman's severed head.

**x**

Four and a half hours had passed since Tony threw Kort's South African dirtbags into cells. 

Not even five hours. 

Now he had significantly less than the recommended dose of sleep, ice water in his shoes, and six heads at the entrance of the NCIS parking lot – at least three of them federal agents. And that wasn't even the worst of it.

She did look a lot like Ziva. But the face was a little longer, and the hair was darker, finer. Tony could tell it was different even in the rain and bad light, hair plastered all over her forehead. The ends of it floated in the same puddle he was kneeling in, mixing with a slick, rainbow layer of gasoline.

Eventually Gibbs stopped shouting into his phone and came to stand next to him, and Tony rose to his feet.

The boss barely glanced at the woman's head. "Kort's not answering his cell. Don't suppose you have a way to contact Gray?"

Tony blinked at him. "I always found him at his school, but Gray won't show his face there again until O'Donnell's history." He shook his head. "He was careful. We both were."

"Yeah," Gibbs said shortly. "IDs on the three unknown vics, Dinozzo. I want them."

Gibbs glanced at the woman's head again and stalked off, pissed. Because somedays, all the careful in the world didn't matter a damn.

**x**

By 1030 the scene had been canvassed, sketched and photographed. The heads were down with Ducky, one long, shiny table given over to each, and the final layers of evidence rushed to Abby's lab hours ago. Gibbs was standing in the elevator, letting Fornell scream at him.

Gibbs' team was scouring missing persons reports and contacting family members, explaining how the Marines died. In a training accident. Gibbs had seen enough of what they had on tape to know that there was nothing useful there. He'd interviewed the stone-faced morning watch right in the guard booth at the gate, but hadn't seen anything, either. Didn't know what any of this was about, except that Barnes and Juares were good guys, sharp, and maybe they didn't expect much to happen on watch at the Navy Yard - the last time this post saw action was the War of 18120 – but they'd a been ready for anything. 

Except they hadn't been ready, obviously. Not for this.

Fornell lost steam, eventually. Gibbs tuned back in when Fornell heard him ask if he thought the missing Marines were still alive. Gibbs shook his head. "Blood washed away in the rain. On the tape they both took head shots."

Fornell nodded. "I've got a team at Dargas's house and another at Arena's. Nothing out of place at either. Dargas told his wife he was working the weekend, so she didn't think anything of him not making it home. Arena was single."

Tobias looked him over then, and Gibbs returned the stare. They had a good working relationship, had become friends, even. But neither man was one to be pushed around, and Fornell already knew enough, really. Knew Gibbs had been sniffing out connections to a Colombian cartel for months. And there was that kid – the one who could pull Gibbs from his bed, and make him go toe-to-toe with Dargas' entire unit. Fornell knew the kid was caught up in this fight. He'd watched when his agents booked him after the Burnett incident, when they'd searched him for identifying marks, and found plenty.

And now two of the FBI's DC trafficking agents were dead, laid at Gibbs' doorstep.

"Tell me what this is about, Jethro." The _or I'll make this investigation a living hell for you_  was understood.

Gibbs leaned back against the elevator wall, gripping the rail. Cassie's advice on secrets sprang to mind.  _We keep them for enemies_.

He started with the assassination of three brothers in Colombia twenty years ago. When he was done, Gibbs met his old friend's gaze squarely. Wondering if this moment would mark the end of that friendship. All of this - the danger to his team, the lost FBI Agents - was the fall-out from one murder. The one Gibbs committed. Just like scores of bad guys he and Fornell had taken down in their careers, his one crime had spiraled unimaginably out of control. Gibbs killed Hernandez for the best of reasons, but in the end that was just his excuse, and so far, the consequences didn't seem to care for excuses.

Fornell looked him over silently. "I have a gift for you, Gibbs," he said finally, and flipped the elevator switch. "Actually, it's more a loan."

He led Gibbs to one of the third floor conference rooms and opened the door briefly, letting him peer in at the familiar agent sitting there.

"Agent Harris, if you didn't already know. Arena's usual partner. You have twenty minutes, and this stays in the conference room, we clear?"

Gibbs scowled. "Do you even know what he did when Gray was in his custody?"

"Yeah, Harris told me," Fornell said promptly, and held up a hand at Gibbs' disgusted reaction. "And I spoke to Agent David. She confirmed that what he said was accurate. He'll be punished for what he did as an FBI Agent, Jethro. By the FBI."

Gibbs studied Fornell, wondering what had raised the man's hackles. "In the conference room for now," Gibbs growled. "But no guarantees after that." If the agent sitting in that room had helped O'Donnell, knowing what he was, then Gibbs was going to drag him into interrogation and get a confession out of him whether the FBI fought him every step of the way or not.

Fornell opened the door again and followed him in. Gibbs sat down silently, expectantly, and Fornell settled beside him, gesturing for the agent across from them to start talking.

The bully who interrogated Gray all those months ago was shellshocked. Fornell had shown him pictures of Dargas and Arena, as they'd been found at the gate, along with photos of the unknown vics. He didn't recognize anyone but his teammates. But he did explain how O'Donnell wormed his way into the FBI unit.

"When Angela went missing during that op, Dargas wouldn't let us into the field to help with the search. Said we had to stay in the building or go home. Fred was out of his mind. So I got us assigned to interrogations. That's why we were questioning that junkie in the first place."

"Angela Monaco," Fornell filled in. "One of the three from Dargas' unit killed by a gang in DC last fall. Your . . . informant provided information that helped us to locate two of the bodies."

Gibbs said nothing. He remembered everything about that day.

"Go on, Harris." Fornell's voice was tight.

"Fred and Angela were engaged. When her body was found off that kid's tip, he thought the kid must've known more, maybe even been involved and got immunity for some shit reason. It was obvious NCIS had a deal with him."

Harris raised his eyes to glare at the two senior agents. "We had the intake photo and the photo of his friend, the one too strung out to be questioned." He shrugged. "We showed them around to our contacts, found out that they were probably Colombian. So we sent them to the Colombian task force." Harris straightened, eyes glittering with conviction. "Declan O'Donnell, he's with the Colombian Security Commission. He flew up here to help us search for wanted South American nationals believed to be on the East Coast - like your _informant_ ," he hissed at Gibbs. "He's been pegged for multiple murders and kidnappings. That kid is part of a Colombian gang moving into old Reynosa territory, trying to take over Reynosa distribution points throughout the US, including DC." Harris leaned forward, earnest and angry. "Do you even know who you're dealing with?"

Gibbs' phone started to buzz toward the end of that.

He'd heard all he need to know anyway, and pushed away from the table. "Get this idiot out of my building, Tobias."

He stood up and walked out, already speaking into his phone. "Yeah, Duck." Gibbs surveyed the bullpen and his oblivious team as he listened to the doctor's findings.

**x**

"Where's Gibbs?"

"Meeting with Fornell."

All three of them cast dubious looks up at the closed conference room door, and then fixed their stares determinedly back on the screens in front of them.

"This is impossible," McGee groused. He was scrolling through satellite and airfield images. There was more than a little despair in his tone. "Even if O'Donnell and his team haven't already left, he wouldn't stroll into an airport at this point, no matter how small and obscure it is."

The FBI had insisted on interviewing the family members and retracing their dead agents' steps themselves, without NCIS interference. Gibbs hadn't seemed to care. His priority was identifying the unknown victims and tracking down O'Donnell as quickly as possible. Without alerting Colombian authorities. Or any authorities, really.

Abby and Ducky were their best hopes for leads, beyond waiting for the CIA to call. But forensic identification took time, and there was almost nothing the team could do about that but wait for Ducky and Abby to finish their work. It took seventy-two hours to determine a DNA match. Tony looked up to see Ziva glancing at her watch, and did the same. Sixty-eight hours to go.

Tony looked at the thousandth missing-white-male photo of the morning and clicked right on by it, just as he had every one before. McGee's computer program had swept and dismissed anyone whose face was in the missing persons database, but the program wasn't always that accurate. And anyway, the most recent disappearances weren't even in the database.

"Doubt a guy like that would stoop to dealing with airport security, McGee," Tony said. "He's at the top of one of the world's biggest cartels. If he wants to bypass the security line he can buy an airline."

"It is much more likely that the CIA - or one of that agency's friends - will find him," Ziva agreed.

Which they'd better do, and fast. If Londono found out that O'Donnell had rebelled and declared war on the cartel's behalf, the organization's leadership would disappear in a hurry.

They fell silent, engrossed in their tasks, only the sound of computer mouses clicking. . . . The suspicious quiet went on for too long. Ziva looked up and was not surprised to see that her partner staring into space.

"What is it, Tony?"

He shrugged and went back to his screen. "It's all pretty convenient, isn't it?"

McGee and Ziva looked at him like he'd announced he was going on vacation after lunch.

"Come on," Tony said. "This hot case comes along and distracts us from our surveillance of the cartel? And from interrogating the informants we took in last night, just when Gibbs and Kort are ready to start planning their next move against them." Tony shrugged. "Maybe that's the plan. He attacks us here, and he distracts us from attacking the cartel at home. Maybe we're playing into his hands by narrowing the focus to O'Donnell. If he thinks Kort's African safari buddy is about to rat him out, O'Donnell wouldn't have much to lose."

"But plenty to gain," Ziva nodded. "If O'Donnell can convince the cartel he was acting in its interests. If they have sufficient warning, the leaders could go into hiding or obscure their activities. Perhaps even offer up a sacrificial goat."

"Hm," Tony said distantly. Still pondering.

"Interesting theories. What do you think?"

Tony jumped. Gibbs' voice was pitched to carry, and coming from directly over his head. He twisted around and peered up. The boss was standing on the landing right behind Tony's chair.

"Hey Boss. . . " Tony trailed off. Gibbs wasn't paying any attention to him. The boss was looking at the partition just beyond Ziva's chair. Tony had to stand to see over it. Ziva and McGee did the same. And gaped just like Tony did.

Gray was sitting at the empty desk on the other side of the wall, his head bent over some papers, flipping through them casually.

Were those from the shred box?

"How did you get in here?" Tony demanded.

The kid ignored the question. But he did look up to meet Gibbs' stare.

Gibbs spun and continued down the stairs, and the kid slipped out from behind the desk, walking around the partition. When Gibbs reached the bullpen and crooked a finger Gray came forward, a little. "What are you doing here, Gray?"

Tony stiffened. Gibbs' voice was soothing, calm. Nice.

The kid blinked, and looked Gibbs over like he thought he may have been body snatched.

"Heard you might have my mother's head in your morgue," he said bluntly. "Came to ID her."

None of them responded immediately. But Gray wasn't in the mood to wait for them to catch up. "I need an agent with me to get in there," he prompted.

"You need an agent with you to get in _here_ ," Tony said.

Gray glanced at him dismissively. "The basement is more secure than this floor," he said.

And then the kid fell silent and glanced around expectantly. Waiting for someone to take him to the morgue.


	26. Bad Days

Gibbs waved a hand toward his desk. "Why don't you sit?"

Gibbs glanced at McGee. The probie grabbed the spare chair from the empty desk next to his, shoving it in Gibbs' direction.

Gray didn't budge. His hair was wet and his clothes were damp and he didn't seem to give a damn about Gibbs' polite invitation. "The morgue is downstairs."

"Yeah," Gibb said, no snark at all. "I know where it is. Come sit down."

To sit, Gray would have to turn his back to Tony and McGee. He stopped before he got to that point and stood there looking at Gibbs, as if whatever conversation was coming could be tossed across the bullpen.

Gibbs glared at his team and they hurriedly sat back down to continue their searches. Anyone who worked for Gibbs gained the ability to multitask on about six different levels. Doing their jobs while eavesdropping wasn't a problem. Tony and Ziva resumed clicking through photos of missing persons. Tim scrolled through leads from the CIA on O'Donnell's whereabouts. None of them looked like they would dream of paying the slightest attention to anything at all beyond the private little territories of their desks.

When Gibbs reclaimed his own seat, Gray moved into the swivel chair set in front of Gibbs' desk.

Gibbs didn't waste any time. "How did you know there were bodies recovered here this morning?"

Silence. But their bulldog boss just sat there, serene, like he'd found his inner Buddha and was prepared to wait forever.

"Why don't we talk about it on the way, Gibbs," Gray said finally. A low, flat challenge.

"If there was a security breach I need to know now," Gibbs countered. "We're hoping we can keep Londono from finding out, but that doesn't seem likely if you already know. How do you?"

"Heard about traffic in the area. Cop came to check it out."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "You happened to hear about traffic around the Navy Yard?"

Silence. Gibbs tilted his head, a _come on_ gesture.

Tony couldn't see the kid's face. But Gray leaned forward, and his tone became weirdly charming. He reached out to fiddle with the pencil holder on Gibbs' desk. "We fucked with him yesterday, didn't we? No way he leaves it like that." Tony and Ziva's eyes met, startled, and wandered discreetly back to Gibbs and the kid. "I thought you'd pay for letting him live, Gibbs. But that was stupid, wasn't it?"

Gibbs knew without a doubt this was a weapon the kid used against O'Donnell. Gray sounded young and sophisticated, sexualized and aggressive. He was blood and honey, an edge of wrongness hovering over them - the kind a man like O'Donnell would be drawn to. Gray smiled, dark and beautiful, as if he knew what Gibbs was thinking.

Gibbs pressed on. He didn't get rattled in an interview or negotiation, or whatever the hell this was. "Stupid? How's that?"

"You people don't pay," Gray said, sweet like a candy-dipped knife.  And then - "I just want to see her." A seductive current ran under the words. An offer.

Gibbs brushed it off. "So Cass came out and saw the scene?" With the perimeter the Marines had enforced? Not possible.

"No. She called Kort."

"I called Fort, didn't get an answer. You know where he is?"

"Yep."

Silence.

Gibbs looked into Gray's eyes, and caught a very thin sheen of trust there. Gray only came to Gibbs for help when it was necessary, when he had nowhere else to turn. Gibbs was never able to do much, but he did what he could - at least what was asked of him. Always came through.

But not today.

"I understand you want to see her. But I can't allow that."

"Yes, you can."

He didn't deny it. 

"Why?" The sweetness was gone.

Gibbs studied Gray for a long moment. The kid didn't so much as blink under the scrutiny.

"You told me yourself that you haven't seen her in six years," Gibbs said. "That would make you - what, eight, nine years old when you last saw her?"

"So?"

Gibbs sat forward, like he always did when he was being nice, when he was trying to connect. "So, even if you could identify her, we would need to confirm with DNA. It's been too long."

"No one can," Gray said stiffly.

Gibbs agreed. "There are other ways to identify remains."

"I'm not giving you my DNA."

Tony frowned at the flat, unequivocal refusal. Something hiding there.

Gibbs looked at Gray, stone-faced, and said nothing. It didn't take long for the penny to drop. "You're using my blood." 

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. It had been all over his clothes and Duck's instruments on the night Gray showed up at his house injured.

"You've already run it."

"Yes," Gibbs said, totally unapologetic. He'd given it to Abby the next day.

Interesting. The kid was a little too still - he really didn't like that.

"Why bother when I can ID her now?" Gray pushed. "DNA tests take a long time."

"Seventy-two hours," Gibbs said evenly. "Not that long."

Tony blinked. Gibbs generally referred to that inflexible seventy-two-hour window, out of Abby's earshot, as some variation of 'a fucking absurd eternity.'

"I remember her," the kid said, very hard, like a warning. "I can ID her."

"But we would still have to wait for the test to confirm." Gibbs paused before gently, finally, pointing out the obvious. "And if it is a match for your mother it'll be better this way."

Gray stared at him.

"The way they left her," Gibbs explained. "That's not what your memory of her should be."

The kid laughed, short and soft, sending ice up Tony's spine. "That's not a problem."

"It is for me," Gibbs said. "We'll wait for the test."

"It's not your call to make."

"Remains discovered on the Navy Yard, part of an NCIS investigation? It's my decision."

Gray's gaze swept the squad room, like he was assessing the space.

Tony shifted. The kid was controlled, usually. But there was a good possibility his mother's head was in their morgue, and all because the team hadn't taken O'Donnell out when they had the chance. Gray was angry even before Gibbs stonewalled him. And somehow, he'd snuck into the building without going through security. Which meant he was armed.

"What about Kort? Can he give a visual ID?" Gibbs asked.

Gray continued his study of the room. "You'd have to ask Kort."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "And you'd have to tell us where he is, or to come in, if he's taking your calls."

Gray plucked a pencil out of the holder on Gibbs' desk. "You can go to hell," he said. He spun the pencil slowly, distractingly, through the short silence that followed. "So O'Donnell's finally gone and killed some of your own. Is that enough? Or do you wait till he hits your team?"

Gibbs didn't flinch, exactly. But he did his version of it - the gaze grew cooler.

"To answer your question," Gray continued. "I think Tony's right. This will distract you from the cartel. In Colombia they'll spin it like O'Donnell's gone rogue. So you'll need the cartel's help to track him down, right? Except the CIA won't call it the cartel for this." Gray smiled. "Should be easy enough to find someone to play O'Donnell." The pencil spun steadily. "Or maybe Londono will really give Diablo up, he's become such a nuisance. Wouldn't it be funny," deadly, "if the cartel turned out to be more useful than you?"

"We're not going to sell you out," Gibbs said. As if the idea was ridiculous.

Tony wasn't so sure. What would they be able to do, realistically, if the CIA and the cartel struck a deal? Gray would be out in the cold. And so would Gibbs' team.

"You think they give you a choice? You join them, you run, or you die. That's how it works when both sides want you dead. And if Diablo has a chance to work this with Londono? I'm done with you."

"O'Donnell is on the offensive in a way he wasn't before," Gibbs acknowledged. "He's a priority now, and we'll deal with him. He won't be able to distract us."

"Your team is looking at missing persons photos, Gibbs. You think Diablo has been reported missing?"

In a normal case, the sarcastic, angry, know-it-all teenager would be packed off to a counselor or social services by now. But Gray actually did have valuable information. And he could probably get whatever NCIS intel he wanted anyway, since Kort and the CIA treated him as an asset.

He _was_ an asset. Kort was right. Gray was in too deep, and from this, at least, Gibbs couldn't protect him. He took a fortifying breath. "There were three unidentified people discovered here this morning. Finding out who they are and notifying their families is also a priority. After that, this case will be handed over to another team here, or to the FBI, so that my team can concentrate on sifting through intelligence on the cartel."

"You find anything with them? The heads?"

"Such as?"

"She wore a cross," the kid probed.

"No. Nothing like that."

"Was there anything else missing?"

Gibbs raised an eyebrow, the nicest version of _try to make sense_  he had in his repetoire.

"The heads," Gray said slowly. Like he was talking to an idiot. "Eyes, ears, tongues? All there?"

Tony looked up sharply, realizing what Gibbs must have known all along. That question was too knowing. 

"Yes," Gibbs said gruffly. "They were intact."

"How did you find them?"

Gibbs shook his head slightly, and Gray elaborated. "In a pile? Thrown in the road? Set up pretty?"

"They were upright, set in a line. Mounted on . . . platforms."

Gray nodded, and seemed to think for a minute. Around him the team appeared to work busily. 

"O'Donnell and the cartel are your priority," Gray tested.

"Yes."

"Kort said you would take care of everyone necessary. Everyone I think is necessary."

Gibbs nodded.

"It has to happen fast. With O'Donnell. Soon."

Another curt nod. "It will."

Gray put the pencil back in the holder on Gibbs' desk. "Cartels think of themselves as family organizations. They look at their enemies the same way." His voice was still cool, but now it was efficient, too. Like he'd accepted the terms and was moving on to business.

Tony gave up the pretense of looking at the missing persons photos. This sounded a lot more useful.

Gibbs was thoughtful. "What does that mean? O'Donnell will see the FBI as a family?"

"No. It means that it was sloppy of the Reynosas to leave you alive. Male relatives should be the first to go."

Gibbs studied Gray curiously, with too much understanding. Like he was reading the kid's face and found several paragraphs.

Gray broke the silence. "Maybe they couldn't get to you because you were deployed. You said you've identified three? I'd look at their sons." Gibbs got it, then, and a quicksilver flash of that slick, unsettling charm crept back into Gray's voice. "The younger the better, for Diablo. And then the brothers, nephews, uncles . . ."

Gibbs shifted toward McGee. "McGee - "

Tim was wide-eyed, fingers already a blur over the keyboard. "Personnel records for Dargas and Arena, Boss. I'm pulling them up."

Tony and Ziva abandoned their screens and watched McGee.

"Dargas has three kids, two sons and a daughter . . .  Daughter lives in Texas, oldest son in Portland, Oregon. The younger one is in college - goes to GW. I'm pulling up his license. Just a second . . . "

Gray got up halfway through that and approached Tim's desk, slipping behind it so he could see the results. Tony and Ziva stood and drifted toward the big central screen.

It only took a few seconds. Tim frowned at what came up and wordlessly sent it to the plasma. Jonathan Dargas' ID appeared there, photo larger than life.

"Damn," Tony muttered.

Dargas Jr's head was in their morgue all right. Palmer had unknowingly set it on the next table over from his father.

Gibbs stood up, brushing past Tony and Ziva. "Keep an eye on him," he muttered, and headed toward the stairs.

Gray's eyes followed Gibbs out of the bullpen. He sought out Tony when the boss faded from view.

"He's going to update our director," Tony said. "And the FBI's going to want to know right away."

"Hm." Gray turned back to look over Gibbs' desk and strolled behind it, sitting casually in Gibbs' seat. Tim's eyebrows just about shot off his head.

Tony kept his incredulity on the inside. "Ah. I would recommend a different chair," he said. "Gibbs is kind of touchy about his space."

"If he wants me out of his space he can send me home." Gray picked up a sensitive report and skimmed it. "Without an escort. What's wrong with him?"

"Nice Gibbs," Tony said shortly, and walked over to pluck the paper out of the kid's hands. "It happens sometimes. On bad days."

"Bad days?" Gray said mildly, and turned his attention back to the desk, scanning for more stuff that he obviously shouldn't read.

"When he's upset," Tony explained.

"So what's bad about today?"

They all looked at him warily. 

It took Ziva a moment to realize. It wasn't sarcasm or anger or manipulation, or any of that. Beyond the sly misdirection it was genuine. A question. 

"If it is true that your mother has been killed then Gibbs will grieve for her," she said simply. "And for you, for your loss. Come." She removed a small gym towel and a sweatshirt from a bag behind her desk and waved a hand toward the restrooms. "You can dry off in the men's room. With any luck Gibbs' chair will also be dry by the time he returns."

Gray smirked unrepentantly and sauntered after her.

 


	27. Trace

Ziva pushed open the men's room door and announced that anyone in there had better get out. When no one emerged she gestured Gray in and stationed herself grimly in front of the door, looking for all the world like the assassin she used to be.

A few minutes passed. McGee announced that he had a hit on another of their unknown heads. Fred Arena had a brother, an accountant for a private firm in Baltimore. Now Fred and his brother were dead, their heads under Ducky's lights.

"Tony? . . . Hey, Tony."

"Yeah, McGee."

"You alright?"

Tony's eyes wandered in Tim's direction. "Never better, Tim. What'd you need?"

McGee frowned at him like he'd said something strange. Then he got up and went over to pick up Tony's desk phone. Which Tony only then realized was ringing.

"Agent Dinozzo's desk."

He was about to snatch the receiver out of McGee's hands when Tim's eyes went wide. McGee covered the mouthpiece and stared at the team's senior agent like he so rarely did these days - like an actual probie.

"It's O'Donnell," he whispered.

**x**

Gibbs brought Fornell with him to Vance's office and updated both of them. Tobias left immediately, determined to reach the families of the FBI agents before gossip or a leak could beat him to it.

Gibbs sat at Vance's conference table after Tobias left, still like a statue in the quiet that followed the slam of the door. It seemed like he'd forgotten where he was. Vance would think he had, if he didn't know for a fact that Gibbs never forgot his surroundings.

"How likely is it that this woman is the boy's mother?"

"What?"

Vance frowned and got up, coming out from behind his desk. "The last ID - the Jane Doe? Are we sure she's not one of ours?"

Gibbs returned his attention to the room, but the look in his eyes was dismissive. "McGee said he ran her against female relatives of the known victims. Hasn't found anything so far."

It'd been years since Leon Vance was an active agent, but he'd been damn good in the interrogation room in his day. He could tell when there was more to a story, even with Gibbs. "And?"

Gibbs tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Duck says she was killed at least a few days before the others and kept cold to delay decay. All of the victims have been dead for less than 48 hours except for her."

"So if O'Donnell is behind this he killed her before he arrived in the States and brought her head with him from Colombia."

Gibbs looked down at the table in front of him, smoothing a big, blunt hand over the slick surface. "He's behind it."

Leon cast one last glance at his desk, at the pile of reports to read and the list of calls to make. Then he pulled out a chair at the conference table and sat down across from Gibbs. He had a feeling the other man would be pacing autopsy right now if he had the choice, grunting through whatever uncertainty this was with Mallard. But their ME was busy. Which left Vance.

"What makes you so sure it's O'Donnell?"

Gibbs' jaw moved for a few moments before he answered. Vance's eyes followed closely, hardly believing what he was seeing. Gibbs hadn't looked this disturbed when Vance introduced himself as director by splitting up the sacred team.

"Same MO as plenty of Calera assassinations in the past," Gibbs muttered.

"A lot of cartels decapitate rivals and use the heads for shock value."

"Yeah."

Vance raised an eyebrow.

"Gray thinks it's O'Donnell," Gibbs said. "That's good enough for me."

An extraordinary thing for this agent to say. Vance nodded, getting a feel for the problem. "So Kort was right. Kid's going to be useful."

Gibbs shifted restlessly, letting his eyes drift to the window. "Almost the first thing he said to me, in Colombia, was that he knew what it felt like to be whipped," he said abruptly, voice flat. "And I thought, you know, if this kid actually gets me out of here I'm going to make sure he gets out too. But I can't. Because he's too goddamn useful."

Vance straightened his shoulders, waiting for Gibbs to go on.

"Gray had the leverage he needed to make a deal with O'Donnell," Gibbs said. "A deal to protect the other kids he runs with. And the CIA wants him too, for whatever reason. He's always been useful, to all of them. To all of us," Gibbs said bitterly. "He's made sure of it."

Was this Gibbs' version of compassion? Defeat? If it was resolve it didn't look like any that Vance recognized. He decided that he preferred the usual, rude, easy-to-decipher Gibbs. And that it was time to lay his cards on the table.

"Once you take out the cartel's leadership he'll be free of them," he said simply.

His most cunning agent refocused, considering Vance carefully. Silently. The director smiled a little. Gibbs didn't know much about Leon's past. But it was not all conference calls and memos. "How many, Gibbs?"

Gibbs sat back and blew out a breath. A what the hell sigh. "Fifteen at least, probably closer to twenty. The only way to be sure is to work it out with Gray and Kort's informant, Hanlan. His information should be more current."

Vance winced. That was a lot. And to involve the kid . . . but if Gibbs thought it was necessary it must be. "You going to tell him? Gray?"

"He already knows."

"And the CIA is going to be okay with it?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Kort says they won't stand in the way, as long as they have a say in the new management."

Vance stared at him. "You're okay with that?"

"We left the position open last time," Gibbs said. "Look how well that turned out."

Vance frowned, disconcerted by the man's toneless answers. So he went back to the other thing - the mysterious usefulness. "Has Kort told you why it is they want him?"

"No."

But Gibbs suspected something, Vance could tell. He thought it over. The CIA would want information, and power over the cartel if they could possibly get it. O'Donnell would just want power. How could the kid promise them that?

Vance narrowed his eyes. "Do you think Gray offered either of them Londono's son?"

"No way."

It wouldn't have explained the CIA anyway. Hiding and protecting Londono's child wouldn't give the Agency anything unless they were actually willing to trade the boy away, give him back to the cartel. And Vance didn't think they were literally soulless over at Langley, tempting as it was to believe at times.

"Well why would O'Donnell think the kid had power in the cartel?" Wait a minute. "Does Gray have some other family connection? How sure are you that his father is dead?"

"He's dead. And I don't care why they want him." Gibbs' phone started to ring. He continued to look seriously at Vance as he dug it out of his pocket. "They're not going to get him."

Gibbs glanced down at the ID, and from the relieved look on his face Vance suspected the man was only sitting in his office to avoid going back to the bullpen with no leads. It would be killing him to wait for forensics while Fornell's agents handled the field work.

"Yeah, McGee." Gibbs was already turning away. He was out of the director's office without another word, phone pressed to his ear, door swinging after him.

With any luck that was a lead. Of course, Vance would be among the last to know if it was. His agents had to verify it first.

He looked disgustedly at the pile of paperwork waiting for him on his desk and heaved himself up from the conference table with a sigh. Vance mumbled something about barnyard animals as he walked to the door to close it, and then returned to his desk to get back to work.

**x**

Tony tore the phone from McGee's grip.

Trace, he mouthed, and jerked his head back toward Tim's desk. McGee scrambled around him and lunged for his equipment.

"This is Very Special Agent Anthony Dinozzo." Tony watched McGee, waiting for the thumbs up that would tell him they had the location. "How may I direct your call?"

"Oh, lovely." A smooth, familiar voice. Tony's stomach flipped, because McGee was right. It was O'Donnell. "I had hoped to speak to you, Agent Dinozzo."

"And who is this?"

O'Donnell laughed, delighted to play the game. After the weird scene with Cassie at the thruway exit Tony had no doubt the man would be happy to play just about any game.

"Declan O'Donnell speaking."

"Mr. O'Donnell. What can I do for you?"

"Well, as I think you are aware, I've been working recently with the FBI. And I must say their file on you, Agent Dinozzo, is fascinating."

"I bet."

Tim had his cell crammed against his shoulder now, speaking into it as he typed. How long would it take? O'Donnell didn't sound like he was in much of a hurry to get to the point, he'd most likely obscured the source of the call. But that was alright. McGee was the best.

"I wanted to drop in on you before I left Washington," O'Donnell continued. "But it was only a short trip, and there was such a lot to do."

"That's a shame," Tony said cheerfully. "But you're welcome to come by any time. Always happy to make new friends."

"Really? You know I had looked forward to meeting your supervisor last May, in Colombia. An Agent Gibbs? But he didn't make it to the meeting. And now I know more about you, Anthony, I begin to suspect that I have you to blame."

At that moment there was a blur of movement to his left. Tony looked up to find Gibbs staring back at him.

"Speaker," Gibbs said lowly, and reached down to press the button.

"Gibbs didn't show up?" Tony placed the handset gently in the cradle. "That doesn't sound like him."

"Is that so? After reading your histories I'd the impression that you were the loyal one, always . . . turning up unexpectedly. An admirable trait, even if it did get in the way of my chat with such an interesting man as Gibbs. My own employer was a bit tedious to deal with after that." A pause, and a breath. Was the guy smoking? "Destroying his helicopter was a nice touch. We had some trouble with our own escape after that."

Gibbs waved him on. Keep him talking.

"Thanks, I think. Did you call to offer me a job, O'Donnell? Or are you just reaching out to flirt?"

Another creepy laugh. "No, I called to see if you'd received my gift for Daniel."

Tony's eyes shot away from Gibbs', back to the phone. To hell with this tip-toeing crap.

"I don't know anyone by that name," he said calmly. "Diablo."

Gibbs stilled, and so did Tim, for just a second.

"My my," O'Donnell murmured. "That sounds familiar. How intriguing."

"Well, I do get around," Tony said smoothly, and closed his eyes briefly. Somewhere Kate was about to lead generations of Dinozzo nonnas as they spun in their graves. "Just ask the ladies."

"Apparently so. My congratulations. And such a feisty girl. Pretty too, beyond that . . . discoloration. Unfortunate that I couldn't arrange a gift for her, but I've only got eyes for Daniel." A pause, a breath. Smoking, definitely. "And not a blemish on him, is there?"

Tony glanced at Tim. He had to be close, didn't he? But McGee was still staring at his screen, typing sporadically. Just past him Tony's eyes tracked two figures. Gray had reappeared and was moving toward the pen, followed by Ziva. Tony met Gibbs' eyes again and cut that way, head tilting with the movement. Gibbs followed the look.

"If you have a package for anyone at NCIS it's best to send it to an agent directly," Tony said helpfully. "And be sure to leave a return address. The post office insists on that."

"Mmm. The postal service." O'Donnell practically wrinkled his nose through the phone. "It lacks a certain flair."

Gray froze in front of McGee's desk. He'd heard.

Ziva followed behind Gray, eyes darting from Tony to Gibbs, wondering what was going on. Gibbs pointed at her and twirled his finger - a _get him out of here_.

"And I've always preferred the personal touch," O'Donnell purred.

Gibbs' hand moved to Tony's phone, to take it off speaker. But Gray moved quickly, slipping out from under Ziva's attempt to stop him, seizing Gibbs' wrist before he could hit the button.

"A phone call isn't very personal, is it?" Gray said, looking at Gibbs.

"Daniel?"

"Hello, Dex."


	28. Dex

Gray took his hand once before. That first night, in the jungle, when Gibbs couldn't see two inches in front of his face. Gray took his hand and led him through the trees, through the dark. Now the kid was looking at him like he wanted Gibbs to follow once again.

"Who else is there, Daniel?"

Gibbs nodded slightly.

"Dinozzo, Gibbs, McGee, and David," Gray said. He'd turned from Gibbs to face the phone, but his hand still clutched Gibbs' wrist, thin fingers strong and cool. "It's an open office, there are others around."

A soft exhale. "Did you see what I brought you?"

"No." Gray shoved Gibbs' hand away and released him.

"Not even photographs?"

"No. They don't want me to see." The agents' eyes widened. Gray usually sounded like an adult, and a hard one. But those words were almost absurdly young.

"Mm, a shame. They can be cruel even when they're trying to be kind. I told you that before."

"I know." Gray leaned forward, placing both hands on Tony's desk. "They think I wouldn't recognize her. If it is her."

"Well. I can save you the uncertainty, Daniel," O'Donnell said kindly. "It is your mother. Her death was necessary. The others - honestly, the choice there wasn't important, any of them would do. But I couldn't resist the ones who hurt you. You shouldn't put up with that sort of treatment."

Gray stared at the phone, motionless. There was another shush of exhalation from the speaker.

"Do you feel badly?" O'Donnell asked curiously.

"Yeah," Gray said simply.

"I know you had fond memories of her. I chose the FBI agents to make it up to you. I heard all about what they did from Arena, and from that CIA woman. Of course she also admitted her own ineptitude, in the end, for not helping you sooner. Tell me, did they leave any marks?"

It took Gray a moment to respond. "No."

"Ah, good. That's something."

Tony glanced at Gibbs. The boss was standing close to the kid, like some hulking, ineffectual buffer. But he was staring at McGee. Tim was muttering urgently into a headset now, still typing.

O'Donnell's protections were really good, then.

"I don't understand," Gray said, soft and flat. "Why her."

O'Donnell sighed though the phone, clearly annoyed. "Beyond the abysmal way she treated you? The cunt was living with Roberto, Daniel. She would have had another brat with him. And then where would you be?"

Grays hands curled into fists. "Londono?"

"Yes."

"You found her with him."

"Yes, Daniel."

In the pause that followed Gray raised an arm, silent, to swipe at his eyes. Gibbs' hand hovered tentatively over one of his shoulders, and finally rested there lightly.

"I should have tied her to a fence and had her stoned," O'Donnell said carelessly, "for betraying you. Do you remember that whore in Huila?"

"Remember all of them, Dex."

"All of the whores?" O'Donnell asked teasingly.

A choked laugh - the most obscene thing Tony had ever heard.

"Them too," Gray said.

"Well, your mother's death was boring, if it makes you feel better. I knew you wouldn't want her to suffer, though she warped your mind and utterly deserved it," he added, irritated. "A shot to the chest, Daniel, lights out. And now you and Sean are both better off. Even your bitch mother would agree with me there."

A long moment of quiet as the kid went tense, digesting that. And then . . . 

"Thank you," Gray said softly.

Gibbs wasn't watching McGee anymore. He stared at the kid, at the part of his face he could see. 

"Mm. How is America then? You're not getting fat are you?"

"No. It's okay." Gray spoke quickly. "School football's terrible. TV's like you said too."

"What else? Still going to church to pray for your soul?"

"Can't hurt," the kid mumbled. Like a much younger boy.

"Of course it can. Just look at you."

Gray didn't respond.

"I have your mother's cross here. Do you remember it?"

"Yeah."

"I was tempted to have it melted down. I picked up a beautiful antique pistol in Cape Town, I thought I could use the gold for an inlay. I know there is no afterlife," O'Donnell said lazily, "still I like the idea of pissing her off for all eternity. But I decided to wait and save it for you. Perhaps it would make a nice gift on your return."

"Yeah. Thanks," Gray said. "For keeping it."

He sounded vulnerable, now, and Tony stiffened. He'd been undercover plenty of times, and he knew how good a lie could be. But usually they were good when there was truth in them, and he wasn't sure it was possible to act that young - that lost - without feeling it.

"Ah. That was your cue to tell me about your recent adventure. Your actual return? I don't quite believe Agent Dinozzo found his way through Calera land with a compass and a dream. Unless it was one of the others?"

Gray hunched his shoulders, curling in like he'd taken a blow. But when he spoke his voice was steady, reaching for indifference. "No. I led them."

"Please don't tell me the helicopter was you? It was hardly subtle."

"No. That was the agents."

"Good. And the ten men who vanished?"

"Gibbs did two."

"My, you do get into trouble," O'Donnell said fondly. "Anything I would find amusing?"

Gray stood staring into nothing for a few moments, silence stretching like a tightrope over a horrible fall. Gibbs turned him gently by the shoulder. Bent close to look into dull eyes, and shook his head. _You don't have to do this._

Gray ignored him. "Maybe. The last one," he said, and laughed a little. Still looking at Gibbs. "Didn't get him fast enough. Had to chase him down."

"He'd be a dumb fuck not to run, wouldn't he?"

"He was too scared to move quiet, though. So he stopped to hide." Gray was looking at Gibbs intensely, now. Gibbs returned the stare calmly. "That could have been alright, it was one-on-one. But it was dark and he didn't have night gear."

"Careless," O'Donnell observed.

"Yeah. Well he was trying to be quiet, and I wasn't sure where he was, just that he was close. Then I heard him talking. Turned out he was praying - out loud."

O'Donnell laughed softly. "That is amusing."

"I think he thought they were in his head. He was too freaked to realize he was saying them." Gray frowned at Gibbs as if puzzled, and turned back to the phone. "Guy must've been new, or stupid."

"A lot of people are very stupid when they're terrified."

"Yeah," Gray said.

"It's not like he'd have gotten away from you even if he'd stayed silent. So did you kill him slowly, show him how meaningless his prayers were?"

"One to the head."

"You're no fun, Danny boy."

"No, I know."

O'Donnell sighed through the phone. "Still makes me want to fuck you through a wall. We could have caught up face to face in DC. What was all the drama about?"

"Didn't know who it was, we don't just stop for anybody. What was with the thug escort?"

Gray had returned to staring at a blank spot on Dinozzo's desk.

"Liar," O'Donnell said. "You knew it was me. If only since I've always got a thug escort."

"The FBI?" Gray snorted.

"Ah yes. That was new. And a particularly annoying crew, too. Dargas and Arena died in a very satisfying way, I'd say. Sometime when four federal agents aren't eavesdropping I'll tell you all about it."

"Think I can guess," Gray said quietly.

"Yea, I'm sure you can. So Daniel," a pause, another long, lazy breath. "Have they given up trying to track me down?"

Gray glanced toward McGee. "No. They're not really the giving up kind."

"And you didn't tell them how useless it would be?"

"Yeah. What'd you say? Quid pro quo, right?"

A delighted little laugh. "Exactly. Perhaps you have a sense of humor after all."

"And . . . wanted to catch up, Dex."

"Hm. Don't stay up there forever, Danny boy. I've not got the patience of a saint."

The line went dead and Gray shoved past Gibbs - heading for the stairs. Ziva surged after him, but Gibbs held her arm. "Let him go."

When Gray disappeared Gibbs turned in the opposite direction, until the only reasonable, convenient target for his anger was in sight.

"McGee!" he roared.

Ziva stepped nimbly out of the way.

But McGee didn't even flinch. He ignored Gibbs totally, except to raise his own voice to whomever he was talking to over the headset. There was a flurry of technobabble that none of the rest of them understood, followed by a loud, "I have the clearance!"

Silence. Tim's face was getting purple, the vein in his forehead mimicking Gibbs'. It was the first time in all their years together that Tony had found anything about the two men to be remotely similar.

"I will!" Tim shouted. And then McGee ripped the headset off and threw it at his computer. For a few moments they were all still, a weird silence around them.

It ended when Gibbs picked up his desk phone and called Vance.

**x**

Twenty minutes later the team stood stiff and quiet in MTAC, staring ferociously at the onscreen image of Kort's supervisor.

"Yes," Holdner said. "It is possible they have the technology to obscure calls indefinitely. Probable, actually."

Vance looked fiercely at Gibbs' team, demanding their continued silence. "How is that 'probable,' Holdner?"

"We developed the ability to block call tracing with a mobile unit to aid our operatives in the field. Actually, the technology doesn't block the trace so much as shift the satellite path of the call, so that it's impossible to find its source. Our targets were increasingly able to trace our calls just as we do theirs. We had to put an end to it."

"And how does that explain why anyone in the Calera cartel would have the technology to do the same?"

Holdner sighed.

"You're kidding me," Vance said flatly.

Tony frowned, looking between the two men. "The Caleras stole it from us?"

"No, Dinozzo," Vance said, gazing at the screen. "We gave it to them."

"Excuse me?" That was Ziva. "We gave it to them?"

"You are aware, I think, that the CIA and US Special Forces have worked closely with the Colombian government and landowners in the region for decades," Holdner said, tone soothing and reasonable. "Powerful Colombian families and corporate interests have been useful in operations against cartels and rebel forces in South and Central America - "

Gibbs turned on his heel and walked out.

**x**

That night, when David Holdner got home, he found Gibbs sitting in his living room. Holdner paused halfway across the darkened room and turned to look at him. "If I were the sort to get nervous this would definitely do it," he said.

"Safe to talk here?"

Holdner shrugged and sank into the sofa across from Gibbs. "Safe as anywhere."

"I want access to your eyes on South Africa and South America, and from there into the States. Anywhere O'Donnell is known to travel frequently."

Holdner scratched his forehead. "We don't have - "

Gibbs laughed, loose and friendly.

"That's not possible," Holdner conceded.

"Yeah, thought you'd say that." Gibbs rubbed a hand over the deep, velvety brown material covering the arm of the couch, watching as the color shifted to a silver gray when the dim light hit the fabric differently. "Gray said something interesting today. That the CIA would end up working with the cartel to find O'Donnell. Said the two of you would be happy to pin O'Donnell as the scapegoat. And he said Londono will use the opportunity to earn the CIA's protection. To cement his position as an ally."

"But O'Donnell isn't a scapegoat," Holder replied easily. "He's genuinely out of control, and a real threat. As for the cartel, protection is a bit far," he admitted. "But Roberto Londono has been useful. In many areas, over many years. It is a fact that Londono is an enemy of our enemies. Gray understands that, I think. From what I know of him the boy understands strategy better than half the graduates of the War College."

"Guess so, since he knew you would sell him out."

Holdner didn't go for the bait. "It is frustrating to have to work around an organization like the Calera cartel. But they are entrenched, and an all out war with them is not one we have the will to fight. Which means we work with them, or around them. Fortunately there are some benefits. In this case, O'Donnell - who is a threat to us all - will be found relatively easily and removed from the picture. And it is also true that we will have a better relationship with a powerful man who holds enormous influence. Londono may not be a friend, but in this case it is clear he's the lesser of two evils. We'll have a better base for our own operations in South America, and we'll have warned the Calera organization back a bit, checked some of its power."

Gibbs nodded thoughtfully. "A powerful man. Gray said you'd call Londono a powerful businessman, but close enough. You know what else he said?" Gibbs looked up at the ceiling, as if it would help him remember the exact words. "'You'll join them if you can. If you can't you'll run, or you'll die. That's how it works when both sides want you dead.'" Gibbs grinned a little. "Good advice. I guess he went to the Conlon school of war, huh? I heard about that guy in the Corps."

"I'm not surprised."

"Supposed to be a brilliant military mind, right? Started out as a small unit strategist. Did some damage in Ireland, and a lot of damage in those Central American revolts. Did I get that right?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you ordered him killed?" Gibbs asked. "Too clever?"

"What do you think? You saw up close the army he was able to build with Calera resources at his back. Conlon was a severe threat."

"And you left O'Donnell to step into his shoes. Because Declan O'Donnell is, what, Mr. Rodgers?"

"O'Donnell is a cruel man, and an intelligent one, as you know. But he doesn't have Daniel Conlon's ambitions. He doesn't have the charisma, or genius for strategy. O'Donnell merely maintains the paramilitary organization Conlon created. If we'd left a man like Daniel Conlon to his own devices he would have built a military force capable of taking over the country."

Gibbs nodded. "Could've been strong enough to shake off the CIA's influence in Colombia."

"That too."

"You know, a good head for strategy is great, but it doesn't make you a mindreader. Gray could see the writing on the wall, assumed the CIA would side with the cartel because the agency wants to maintain the status quo, work the game, earn more influence. He was right about that. And the kid just assumed that I would side with you too, or get out of your way." Gibbs laughed a little, sound fond and strange. "That's the thing about being young. Doesn't matter how smart you are - you don't recognize people with no interest in the status quo, with no loyalty to the way things are. Not even when you're tripping over them. You don't know the value of it," Gibbs finished softly.

"What are you suggesting? That you'll form your own alliance with the cartel? That you'll form one with O'Donnell?" Holdner smiled cooly.

"Why not?"

Gibbs leaned forward a little in the silence that followed and grinned, aware that in this context it would give him the air of a lunatic. "I don't have anything to lose. And his allies," he gestured toward himself, "call him Dex."


	29. The Bargain

There was nothing more satisfying, Gibbs reflected, than shocking an agent of the CIA. He stood up and grabbed his coat.

"Let's go for a drive," he said. "No one's house is this secure."

The other man frowned up at him. "I'm supposed to believe I'm going to be more secure driving somewhere with you?"

"My team knows where I am," Gibbs shrugged. Well. They could obviously figure out where he'd gone, with enough motivation. "If either one of us gets killed they'll know who to blame."

"Oh. Reassuring." But Holdner picked up his coat and followed him out the door.

They drove in silence and ended up settling into a couple of metal chairs outside a deserted Starbucks.

"Have you heard from Kort?"

"No," Gibbs said shortly. "He isn't returning my calls."

Holdner sighed. "Our agents are supposed to be self-reliant. But that man takes it to extremes."

Gibbs threw him a derisive look. "What'd you expect? A picket fence and Little League games?"

"No," Holdner said evenly. "I expected this. It's still irritating."

Gibbs smirked into his coffee cup. "Bet you didn't expect him to take the kids' side over yours." Shocking lack of self-interest. Same as Gibbs' own.

"Kort has always been difficult to predict. Your own determination to strike Londono at all costs is more surprising. I know you don't mind risking your life for your cause, Gibbs. But your career – your team – that does surprise me."

Gibbs sipped his burnt coffee. "Londono is unfinished business," he said simply.

"And your agents?"

"It'll only be a risk if it doesn't work. Besides, my team knows where I am. Never said they know what I'm doing."

Holdner cast him a dubious look, which – fair enough. Ignorance would only protect them as long as they stayed ignorant. His team would have to be dumber than he knew them to be not to figure it out. And of course, at that point, it would be next to impossible to keep them from getting involved.

"So," Holdner said. "You'd like me to believe that you would work with O'Donnell in order to take out the cartel? Even Kort refused to work with that man."

Gibbs stared into the bitter liquid in his hands. "It was made clear to me today that the kid is already working with him."

Or just working him. Using O'Donnell's ambition and his insanity to get whatever protection Gray could from him. A dangerous game, and an ugly one. If it had to be Gibbs or the kid, Gibbs would work with the man. He would gladly use him to bring down the cartel. He would call it a win. And then he would kill him.

"I'll do what I have to do to bring them all down. All of them," Gibbs emphasized. "If that means using O'Donnell to prevent an alliance between Londono and the CIA - an agreement that would _protect_ the cartel - that's what it means." He looked up from his coffee and watched the evening traffic cruise by, late commuters on their way home. "But I'd appreciate it if you didn't force me into that position."

"I already told Kort we wouldn't stand in your way."

"Yeah, you'll let us do your work while you hedge your bets. That's generous. But if we're going to find them all before O'Donnell and Londono set up their next moves, or go underground, we also need your resources."

Holdner sighed. "What, exactly?"

"Satellites, records and hours. And the hidden base in Colombia that we moved out of before."

The other man raised an eyebrow at the outrageous request. Gibbs knew it was outrageous. He didn't care.

"What about teams?"

"We'll use our own."

"Don't trust me, Gibbs?"

"No."

"Huh. And we get a say in the new management? If the Agency does blow off this opportunity to worm its way in with Londono - well, we'll need some guarantee of that."

It turned Gibbs' stomach to even think about the next generation. He drank more of the offensive coffee and forced himself to shrug. He'd already proven once today that he had trouble picking his battles, just like his CO had taken such pleasure in pointing out, over endless push-ups, thirty years ago. No need to go overboard. "That's up to Kort, with Gray's approval. Kort told me he likes the informant, to start."

"Hanlan?"

"Yeah."

"Hm." Holdner mulled that over. "Well, he may be easy to manipulate. Kort's already lured him out once. But it would be better if Gray assumed a role in the new organization as well."

Gibbs almost dropped his coffee. Almost. "You're out of your mind," he said harshly.

"No," Holdner gazed at him tiredly. "I'm not. But I understand he does not want to return to that life. If it wasn't so inconvenient I'd say it was commendable."

Gibbs just stared at him. It was never going to happen.

Holdner waved a hand, a forget it.

"We have a good shot," Gibbs said quietly. "We can change the game. You're never going to get a better offer."

"The surveillance is good," Holdner said. "I'll give you that." He studied Gibbs closely. "If I can give you what you ask for, you understand that you'll be out in the cold? If anything goes wrong you'll have no protection. Even from the Agency, if they decide you're in the way of cleanup. The price would be significant."

Significant. Compared to what? To the people he'd already lost to cartels? To the cost Gray and Cassie and all the rest of them already paid? There was nothing he would not give to end that, and still call it a bargain.

"Yeah. I know how it works."

"What about your team?"

"What about them?"

Another mighty sigh. "The same rules apply. If I were you I'd get them out, steer them clear, if you can convince them to go. But they're your people."

Holdner stood up, tossed his full coffee, and headed toward the car.

**x**

Gibbs didn't know about the new ritual.

The only reason there was a new ritual to begin with was that Gibbs had been accused of murder and taken to Mexico, and then to Colombia, and the team had somewhat lost its collective mind. So of course Gibbs didn't know about it.

When their boss left so abruptly after that charming little video chat with Kort's boss, the team decided, unanimously and without discussion, to search the building top to bottom for Gray. They found nothing. Then they requested a sweep of the Yard. Nada, except to figure out that Gray had slipped through security with a hundred other kids on a school field trip to the Navy Museum.

After that they studied the thin information streaming to McGee's computer from the CIA. That got them nothing, too, but had the added benefit of making them angry. The team read through local PD reports of unusual activity. That got them nothing, and to add insult to injury, was boring.

They'd been shooed from Abby's lab multiple times and finally locked out. Ducky gave them the silent treatment, Ducky-style - which included a good bit of glaring. Finally they found themselves sitting at their desks, watching enviously as other teams were sent out to chase down criminals who were actually possible to find. Closing time came and went, but they couldn't go home. Partly because Gibbs had dropped off the face of the planet without dismissing them. Partly because Gray and the rest of the kids were out there, and O'Donnell and all of the other bad guys were out there too. And while they obviously couldn't do anything about it right at the moment, they couldn't just go home and let it be, either.

It was after hours and the ME's initial exams were done. So Tony invoked the new ritual, and they'd trooped down to autopsy to pull out the ME's bottle of Scotch. Gibbs found them there an hour later, sitting in a collection of swivel chairs, talking quietly around the tall bottle of McCallan.

"It's the names," McGee was saying. "There's too many of them."

Tony was sitting backwards in a chair, hugging the backrest, chin on his hands. "Out of all the fucked up stuff that could be bothering you right now, it's nicknames you find the most bothersome."

"Yeah." McGee had kicked his feet out to slouch down in the chair. Now he squinted up into the obnoxiously bright lights, face set like he was about to say something profound. "It's the tipping point. They've all got a regular name and a nickname and a name people actually call them - Declan and Dex and Diablo and Cassandra and Cop and Natalia -

"But it is understandable," Ziva said, "to want a new name for a new life. Many cultures acknowledge a new beginning with a new name."

"You've got a new life," Tim yawned. "You didn't get a new name."

"That is not true," Ziva sniffed.

The boys' heads rolled toward her. Waiting for the big reveal.

"Gibbs calls me Ziver. Tony calls me Ninja-Chick, on occasion. And you have called me Probie." She smiled, proud. 

Apparently she approved of all the new names.

"Those aren't exactly - "

"Yes," Ziva said firmly. "They are."

"Don't argue with the ninja, McGoo. It's not McSmart."

"It's not the same," Tim insisted. "They even have a nickname for Kort. It's needlessly confusing." Tim's feet flopped back and forth, slowly, while he pondered the ceiling. "At least they haven't given us nicknames. I wouldn't even - "

Ziva chuckled darkly.

"What?"

"I would be very surprised, _Elf Lord_ ," she stressed, "if they have not given us names of their own. It is their habit to use alternate names, for security I am sure. Those kinds of habits - the kind you grow up with - they do not change quickly." She smiled mysteriously, probably remembering some amusing Israeli high-security family moment.

Tony swiveled his chair back and forth. "That is so true."

Ziva and Tim turned slowly to face him, narrowing their eyes. "What do you know?"

He grinned. "Nothing I'm ever going to repeat in Gibbs' lifetime."

"Ah," Ziva smirked. "They have given the silver-haired fox a new title."

Tony smiled innocently. "Who could say? But I do know the best way to keep a secret, Zee-vah." Rule #4. Keep it to yourself.

They fell silent for a few moments.

"Rituals are okay," Tim said out of the blue. "But this doesn't have the one clear benefit of drinking too much. No dreams. Unless I get drunk between the next time I sleep and now, I'm gonna dream about heads." If he was lucky. And if he was unlucky -

"Not just dreams, probie. Try having a drink in mixed company sometime. You just might figure out how the rest of the human race loses its sexual inhibitions." Tony, of course.

Tim grinned. "You have sexual inhibitions?"

Dinozzo opened his mouth gleefully. Ziva stepped in before he could share. "Please do not answer that. As I am not actually drunk it is all too likely I will  remember it in the morning."

Another pause, until Ziva snapped her fingers. "Drinking gives you courage as well. Yes? It is called - French courage!"

Tony snickered helplessly. Tim corrected her. "Dutch courage."

"I like 'French courage,' actually - "

"Regardless of nationality," Ziva rolled her eyes. "Drinking to excess can lower all kinds of inhibitions."

Silence again. They looked out over the row of murder victims. "Drug use has a similar effect, of course," she continued absently. "That is probably why Gray and the other children were given narcotics when they fought with the cartel."

McGee's eyes wandered back to the untouched bottle of Scotch. It suddenly looked sinister. "Unless he was on something today I don't think Gray needs any help in that department. Talking to O'Donnell didn't seem to bother him all that much." McGee had the faintly irritated tone of voice that he latched onto when he didn't understand.

Ziva huffed listlessly, her eyes on the shiny doors that kept the corpses cold. "Gray was forced to work with that man, McGee. To survive him. You cannot show fear to a man like O'Donnell. It is never wise to show fear to anyone who has power over you."

Tony swiveled in his chair to study her blatantly. She felt it; her eyes skittered toward him and then away again.

"So, what, you thank him for killing your mother instead? To prove how fearless you are?" McGee. Oblivious. "The man who tortured and - " he stumbled as his brain finally caught up to his mouth. But he had enough respect for her to finish. " - hurt so many people? Hurt you?"

"O'Donnell is a powerful man in that world, McGee. Powerful enough to provide some protection, if he could be convinced to do so. Only Gray can know if the price of his protection was worth it."

McGee frowned. "But Gray's not in that world anymore - "

"Come on, Tim. O'Donnell delivered his mother's head to our doorstep. He won't be safe from the dirtbag until the dirtbag is dead."

Gibbs took that as his cue. "If any one of you is drunk I'm going to kick all of your asses."

Tony stood up so fast his chair rocketed back into the closest autopsy table. Dargas' head, exposed brain and all, wobbled on its perch.

Gibbs stopped next to it, observing as it didn't quite tip over onto the floor. "You almost earned yourself dissection from Ducky, Dinozzo. On top of the ass kicking."

"Yes, Boss. And no, Boss. We're not drunk. I mean, drinking. We're not either of those things."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. "Where is Ducky."

Tony pointed to the ME's office. "Typing his report. But he told us he has nothing significant to add. I mean, the findings in his initial report are pretty much the same as the findings of the ME examinations for the other assassinations carried out in this exact same style, in Mexico and Colombia and now here, in DC. But he's, uh, going to finish more detailed exams tomorrow. And he's still waiting on some results from Abby."

"Come on," Gibbs said, and swept out. The rest of the team scrambled after him, McGee hastily burying the untouched bottle back in the desk drawer they'd taken it out of.

"Got a call from Fornell," Gibbs said as they approached the elevator. "They found the bodies of their four missing FBI agents and our two Marines in a rented cabin in Virginia. The FBI dead match the agents you photographed chasing the kids with O'Donnell. Brown's team is headed out there to work the scene for NCIS. Fornell's sending photographs to your account anyway, McGee. Head to the lab and see if you and Abby can pull anything on O'Donnell's previous or current whereabouts based on those images."

McGee took off for the lab, pleased with his impossible mission.

Tony and Ziva stepped with Gibbs onto the elevator. "Some hunters up there were suspicious of all the newcomers and got a plate number from an SUV that was going in and out. I want you to check it against traffic cams around the Yard's west gate -" Gibbs frowned as they emerged from the elevator and walked toward the dark, empty pen. Because it wasn't quite empty - there was a figure bent over his desk.

"Abby? You got something?"

Abby popped up, startled, and looked at him uncertainly.

"Abs?" His eyes ran over her quickly and settled on a couple of blotches on her neck. They wouldn't have been noticeable, except her skin was so pale. "Something happen?"

"Um . . . no?"

He waited. And stared.

"Well, just, I startled someone?" she tried, and waved a hand. "So, you know, I'm a little . . . startled."

Gibbs kept staring. She'd always been a bad liar when it came to Gibbs.

"I thought maybe one of you could be taking a power nap," she said tentatively, "you know like you do sometimes, under your desks, so I sort of tiptoed in? Except he was startled. He's sorry about it, believe me," she nodded. "Even though he doesn't need to be because, well you know, that's not something you can control, right? I mean he left really fast but he looked really sorry." She gestured behind her. "Sorry, Gibbs," she whispered.

But Gibbs was already looking at the screen, showing a close up of one of the photographs McGee took at the gate that morning. It was Jane Doe's wet head, larger than life, set off on a shiny black backdrop of asphalt.

"That is not the way McGee left the screen," Ziva said.

"I didn't do it! I came up to tell Gibbs about the test results and he was standing here flipping through the photos and I didn't realize who he was - I mean I couldn't see his face and I came up behind him . . . "

"You okay, Abby?"

"Yes," she said. And then immediately, "Don't tell McGee. Um, Gray was just surprised," she reminded them. "It's fine."

"Yeah. Fine," Tony barked. "Because a startled, angry assassin is completely harmless. How could he still be here? We searched this place inside out." Tony looked around the darkened bullpen like he expected Gray to be hiding under one of the desks. "Should we look for him?"

Gibbs shook his head and reached tiredly for the remote, clicking the power button to turn it off. "He's not here."

"How do you - "

"He got what he came for, Dinnozo. He's long gone."

Tony frowned at the dark screen. "But how the hell did he - oh. He watched McGee do his thing, didn't he."

Ziva nodded, remembering as well.

"He said to tell you that you were right, Gibbs." Abby stared at him. "Do you know what that means?"

Gibbs sat down in his chair with a sigh. "What exactly did he say?"

"Um . . . well I said sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, and he didn't say anything. And so I asked him if he was looking for the team, cause they must be around here somewhere, and I could call you if he wanted me to and I was sure you'd come right away if he needed anything. And he said you're Abby, and I said you're Gray, and he asked if I was okay and I said yeah. And that's when he started to leave but first he said 'you can tell Gibbs he was right.'"

She looked at him expectantly and Gibbs looked back - expressionless. Abby couldn't tell if he didn't know, or if he just didn't want to say, or if he was busy thinking . . . with an inscrutable Gibbs there were a lot of possibilities.

Ziva broke the silence. "His mother," she said, and tilted her head toward the blackened screen. "I think Gibbs was right about that. He was not sure that Gray would be able to identify her."

Abby's mouth opened into a little 'o.'

Tony stared at the floor, running his hand through his hair impatiently. "Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Maybe he isn't sure about the ID because it isn't really her. I mean, O'Donnell would lie about that, right? Of course he would. And that's all we're really going on - "

Gibbs' eyes dropped to the note Abby had written. 'Gibbs Lab NOW.'

"What'd you come up here to tell me, Abby?"

She looked at him sadly. All these years she'd found answers for him, some of the worst answers the world had to offer anyone. And still she never spared herself - never turned it off. He didn't know how she bore it. "I rushed the DNA test," she said. "I got a match." Her eyes flicked around to Ziva and Tony and finally settled back on Gibbs. "I haven't gotten an actual ID yet. I don't think she's in the system. But the mitochondrial DNA - Jane Doe is his mother, Gibbs."

Gibbs nodded. "Anything else?"

Of course he knew there was. He always did. Abby fidgeted for a few seconds.

"I ran him against every possible database when you first brought in his blood, Gibbs. And - well, like I said before, I didn't even get a partial match. But that's because it wasn't close enough." She nodded nervously. "But Gray did have a relative in the system. It's just that his mom is a much closer - well, they all share either the same maternal genetic markers - "

Abby and McGee. In league to drive him crazy. "Abs. The point?"

Another quick nod. "Ernesto Calera?"

If he'd let it, Gibbs' heart would have sunk. "Yeah? What about him?"

"Interpol entered his DNA into the system after he was killed in '92." After Gibbs killed him. "You know, so agencies could see if it tied back to any open cases." Abby's voice went a little gentle. "He's Jane Doe's father, Gibbs. Gray's grandfather."

"You sure, Abby?"

"Yes. The samples are all really good, pure. I'm positive, Gibbs."

Ziva shook her head. "I thought the rest of the Calera family was wiped out in the fighting that erupted after the brothers were killed."

"They were," Gibbs said. He'd gotten a report about it. He remembered how he'd skimmed it. How he'd thrown it away. He hadn't cared, plain and simple, and there was nothing he could have done about it anyway. "Gray's mother must have been an illegitimate child. Or hidden somehow."

"Do you think - " Ziva paused, and continued delicately. "Well. It is possible that he does not know - "

"He knows." Tony was standing in front of Gibbs' desk, staring distractedly at the far wall. "And he knows what it means."

Ziva shook her head. "What do you - ?"

"Family land. Remember? In Colombia - he said Rangers don't come onto family land." Tony looked at Gibbs significantly, and Gibbs straightened. He remembered. He remembered the kid holding his rifle, staring at it. Is this what you used to kill the Caleras . . .

"I thought it was weird," Tony said distantly. "But he was already mad at me so I didn't - and then I thought maybe it was a language thing, some weird phrasing, like Ziva does. But it wasn't a language thing - it's not weird. That's what it is, family land." He looked at Gibbs again. "And I bet any surviving relatives of the Caleras disappeared pretty fast, if there are even any others left. They ran before they could be taken out."

Gibbs rubbed his forehead. "Abby. McGee's in your lab. I want you two to dig up anything you can find on the legal ownership of that land. I want to know exactly what Londono's claim to it is. Quietly, you got me?" She nodded, wide-eyed. "Go."

"You two," he nodded at Dinozzo and Ziva. "This is the license - " Gibbs broke off with a curse and scribbled down the rest of the plate number silently as his cell started to ring.

"Go," he glared at them, and opened his phone. "Gibbs."

That was all he said. But after a few moments he picked up the pen again and started writing. When he ended the call he dialed again, taking phone and paper with him as he got up from his desk and headed up the stairs.

"McGee," Tony heard him say, "MTAC, now."

When their steps had faded and the door to MTAC clicked shut, Tony raised his eyes from his screen. "What do we think that's about?"

Ziva glanced at Tony and then up the stairs before returning to her own computer. "I think that everything Gibbs has done since he arrived here this morning has had only one purpose."

Tony nodded. Finding O'Donnell.

"I have the camera at the north end of the block," Ziva said. "You will take the south?"

"Yes ma'am."

Upstairs, in an empty communications room, Gibbs sat down and had a little chat with McGee. Because Holdner had secured the CIA resources they needed to do this job. They talked it through - the risk, the price - before they went to work. Hunting down the devil.


	30. Truthiness

McGee was immersed in another world, maneuvering around the CIA's systems like a kid let loose in a candy store.

Gibbs reminded him of the maps that the surveillance teams in Colombia had sent in, pinpointing locations of activity. McGee added the intel from the government flight they knew for sure O'Donnell was on when he flew into DC, and the few extra details AK coughed up about Calera shipments coming into the States. Every scrap of information they had.

Gibbs' phone buzzed an hour later. It was Tony. Gibbs silenced the phone and leaned in toward McGee - the move that always made Tim feel like the boss could peer into his brain and read his thoughts like they were printed on the back of his eyeballs.

"This enough, McGee?"

Tim's eyes widened comically. Gibbs never asked if it was enough. He ordered Tim to do things, and Tim scrambled to do them. Gibbs didn't seem to care if any of it was possible. The fact that impossible events would occasionally bend to suit Gibbs' whims was half the magic.

"I don't know," Tim said. "O'Donnell's obviously aware of our surveillance methods and knows how to avoid them. We lost him all the time in South Africa and Colombia and coverage here is nonexistent compared to what we have over there . . . " Officially the CIA was prohibited from monitoring the United States at all.

McGee trailed off, and the boss continued to look at him with one of his uncanny Gibbs looks. This one said he wouldn't be averse to opening up Tim's head and taking more satisfactory answers out manually.

Gibbs grunted and stood up. "Get me whatever you can get, McGee. I want an update on your progress every hour."

He walked out, leaving Tim alone in the humming, blinking room. As he pushed through the heavy door Gibbs glanced back at his youngest agent. McGee's dark figure looked small, alone in front of the huge bank of glowing monitors.

Gibbs smirked. McGee had done a lot more with less in the past, but not exactly like a kid in a candy store. More like Ziva let loose at a gun show.

Gibbs wouldn't want to be the man trying to hide from McGee.

**x**

"What've we got?"

"Got a bead on that plate, Gibbs. They passed by the southwest cam at 0510 this morning, took the 395 to the I-95 South. I lost them when they ditched the Interstate." Dinozzo gestured to his computer screen and Gibbs leaned in to see the route, painstakingly picked out of footage from cameras at intersections and tollbooths, snaking through a map of northern Virginia.

That route would take them toward the cabin Fornell's team had discovered.

"And we've got Kort in Interrogation Two."

Gibbs turned to stare at Dinozzo. His second returned it and then some.

"Kort ordered Hanlan up from the pens. I put a guard outside the door," Tony elaborated.

Gibbs nodded as he turned away, heading for the elevator and the interrogation suite. "Get that route to McGee, Dinozzo, and keep working the SUV's movements."

They had to figure out how O'Donnell left if they were ever going to trace where he went.

Gibbs might have stopped to observe the "interview" before he broke it up, but he didn't bother. When he waved the guard aside and opened the door, Kort and Hanlan were sitting side by side, shuffling through a stack of photographs.

Kort took one look at him and rose without a word to join Gibbs in the hall, crowding the agent out of his own interrogation room, pulling the door shut behind them.

Kort looked tired. His suit had seen too many hours and his face was hollow, lined with fatigue. But Gibbs' team looked the same way.

When Gibbs didn't say anything Kort jerked his head impatiently back toward the room. "You want something, Gibbs? Other than wasting my time?"

"You've been off the grid for eighteen hours. I want to know where the hell you've been. And what you've got to show for it."

Gibbs waited for the angry response. It never came.

"I had a few things to take care of," Kort said calmly. "I came in as soon as it was possible."

Gibbs stepped close and got into his face. But Kort only looked away. The once unshakeable arrogance had been sucked right out of him. Gibbs stood there staring until Kort leaned back into the wall, an exhausted man, and caved. "When I received your first message I went to see that the kids were alright."

Kort paused, and a curl of dread whipped through Gibbs' gut. "And?"

"Cass and the others assigned to the first safehouse are fine. Gray and . . . . his group are gone."

Gibbs stiffened. "Gray isn't gone, he was here most of the day. You think someone got to his brother?" And Kort was just telling them _now_?

Kort looked blankly down the hall, staring at nothing. "I don't mean to imply they're in trouble. They've left, the ones from the second house. Gray probably moved them before he came in."

"And you spent the day looking for them."

"Yes."

But - "Gray said he knew where you were."

Kort smiled thinly. "No doubt."

Gray knew Kort was looking for the second house?

"You think he didn't want you to find it? Why hide them from you?"

Kort hesitated, but answered. "He's angry," he said simply.

Gibbs leaned against the opposite wall, trying to read the strangeness in the other man. "So you don't know where they are."

"I'm sure they're somewhere no one will ever find them." Kort said. "Myself included."

"Welcome to my world."

Kort waved that away.

It was true that Gibbs had never really pushed tracking Gray and the others down - not before, anyway. Now he folded his arms across his chest. "O'Donnell called Dinozzo's line today. He spoke to Gray."

Kort nodded. "Cass told me."

So Gray had talked to her sometime after that. Good.

"He also saw photographs of the crime scene - of his mother. We matched their DNA."

Kort nodded again, not at all surprised. He didn't actually look like he was paying much attention. Gibbs shifted irritably. He would start yelling if he thought it would do any good. But he wasn't sure Kort was in any condition to notice.

"He left here upset and alone. And he's armed," Gibbs continued, pointing out the obvious. "We should find him."

Kort looked at him, seeming to consider the words. "Do we? He's not a danger to himself, Gibbs. He won't even risk doing anything that could get him locked up, not beyond what we can get him out of. There's still Sean."

Gibbs rolled his shoulders, thinking of Abby, wide-eyed, marks at her throat. He remembered Dinozzo in that bloody clearing, frozen at the end of the kid's gun. Gray had teetered on the edge in that moment. Gibbs almost lost both of them.

"I don't think he's in control right now, Trent." The understatement of the century.

"Well, I don't know how to find him."

There had to be something. Gibbs stared at him, waiting.

But Kort just looked back at him, eyes blank. "I spent the day looking for them," he said finally. "I didn't find anything. If Gray decides to come back then we will know where he is. Not before." He turned toward the interrogation room, ending the conversation.

" _If_ he decides to come back?" Gibbs said sharply.

Kort paused and shrugged. "He hoped Agency resources could help him find his mother. Now she's gone there's no reason to fight the cartel, is there? No reason to maintain ties to the CIA - to any of us. He could take Sean and disappear."

Gibbs frowned. "He doesn't need you? What about documents? Money?"

"He needed me to enter the country and establish himself here. But he has all of the documentation he could ask for now, and the connections to get more if he needs it. He has more money than you or I ever will."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "Gray skimmed from the cartel?"

Kort looked at him. Of course he had. "More than enough to disappear for a very long time."

Gibbs studied Kort's neutral gaze and finally pegged it. Acceptance. Defeat. If the kids saw that - hell, if his own team saw it - 

Gibbs surged forward, jerked Kort away from the door, and shoved him hard into the wall.

Kort didn't resist. Didn't react at all.

Gibbs leaned in close and whispered into his ear. "I am going to kill O'Donnell," he said. "I'm going to take out Londono, too, and whoever else is a threat to those kids. Just like I told them I would. And then I'm going to take Gray and Sean to their mother's funeral." Gibbs leaned in closer, pushing Kort back hard, forearm pressing into the other man's throat. "Now you can commit to the same, or you can get the hell out of here before I add you to the list. Your choice."

Gibbs straightened up abruptly, relieving the pressure he'd placed on Kort's lungs, patting the rumpled lapels of the thousand dollar suit back into place.

"I dug her grave." Kort said steadily. As if he hadn't just been tossed around. "I didn't get her out. He's not going to want me at her funeral. Or anywhere else."

"I don't care," Gibbs said simply. And he didn't. There were times when figuring out the right thing to do was difficult - the hardest part of the job, even. But this wasn't one of them.

Kort shook his head slightly. "If he's willing to hide now he'll be safer anyway. Not involved. We can take the time - "

Goddamn. Why did he have to make everything so complicated? "Look," Gibbs said forcefully. "You said you want to help them survive. You said that's what you want me to do."

Kort waited, wary.

"For fuck's sake! If we screw this up he won't survive it. If we let O'Donnell slip away he'll never trust us again. He may never trust _anyone_ again. I told him we would get these bastards and that's damn well what we're going to do."

The other agent looked him over carefully, like he was trying to decipher that. "The surveillance coming in on the cartel is good," Kort said slowly. "But if Gray's not involved we only have Hanlan from the inside. He's been in South Africa most of the last few years. He can't give us everything we'll need. And O'Donnell - he - " Kort looked away. "If we kill him we'll only alert Londono to an operation against the cartel. He shouldn't be a priority." Kort's eyes wandered back to Gibbs again. "I don't know that this cartel should be a priority at all. It's unlikely they'll come after you now, you know. And the children with Cassie will be safe enough if we relocate them. They know how to hide -"

Jesus. Gibbs looked up at the ceiling. He searched for the words, and felt his rage drain away, replaced by something flat and heavy. He held up a hand to get Kort to stop, though he didn't really know what to say. Gibbs didn't often try to persuade people to his point of view. He did the job done and walked away, and let the record stand for itself. But that clearly wasn't going to work here. They'd been having this argument, or one like it, for months.

"Maybe. Rationally, you're probably right. They could hide, disappear, and physically they'd be alright. But this is a different kind of safe, Kort." One he was beginning to realize Kort had never known, or had simply forgotten somewhere along the line. A safety based in people. In family. It wasn't about what you could get away with, what they could all survive. It was about what they would stand up for, what they would protect. What they had to win. "We need to do this for them. You have to trust me on that."

Gibbs paused, but Kort just looked at him and waited, expression flat.

It dawned on him then. Gibbs finally got it. The understanding felt like cracking a case, as if all the pieces of some strange puzzle suddenly fit, revealing a truth that had been waiting under the surface all along.

Kort would do it. He might not understand, but he did trust Gibbs. He had from the beginning. Kort placed his faith in them all, utterly - Gibbs just hadn't seen it. He wondered in that moment if he might have forgotten something too, somewhere along the line. Because right at this second it looked like Kort was better at trusting people than Gibbs was.

"Hanlan worked with O'Donnell for years," Kort said, ignoring Gibbs' stunned face. He turned again toward the interrogation room. "He may be able to give us something on O'Donnell's current location."

"Kort."

The man paused and looked back to Gibbs.

"The little girl the other night - the one who stayed close to Sean." Gibbs watched Kort stiffen, subtly, the tiniest of tells. "She with the ones that disappeared today?"

"Yes," Kort said reluctantly, still moving toward the door.

"What's her name?" he pressed.

Kort stopped. He didn't look at Gibbs, but he didn't hesitate either. "They call her Bee."

Gibbs smiled slightly at that. Bee.

"Is she another one? A Calera?" he asked soberly.

"No."

"She related to Londono somehow?"

"No."

Gibbs waited. But Kort didn't say anything more. And Gibbs didn't push it. "Good," he said simply.

Kort's eyes went to his, startled. Then his hand tightened around the steel handle of the door, and he pushed back into the room.

**x**

For the next week they chased the cartel. Kort rarely left the building and barely spoke to any of them. He was focused, surly, and working around the clock.

By the fourth day Gibbs was happy enough with their progress to put his own team back on fairly regular hours. They sifted through Colombian surveillance and listened to Kort's endless, painstaking conversations with Hanlan, as well as more volatile interrogations with the subordinates Kort had arrested. Gibbs went in to question Hanlan every once in awhile, just to switch it up.

On the sixth night Gibbs made his way down to Ducky's, one of McGee's gadgets in his hand. It had a recording of Gray's conversation with O'Donnell on it, a record McGee swore up and down could not possibly be hacked.

Ducky was waiting for him, Palmer sent home for the day. Gibbs pulled up a stool, set the little speaker on Ducky's desk, and hit play. Duck listened once through, frowning. Then he poked at the gadget until it played again. The third time he paused it periodically, taking notes. The fourth time he reviewed his notes, and added to them. And the fifth. And the sixth.

Gibbs could do patience. When he thought it was worth it he could endure just about anything.

Halfway through the eleventh playback Duck turned the recording off.

"Well," he said. "That was disturbing." And then he got up to make tea.

Gibbs sat with his arms folded across his chest, tracking him with his eyes. Waiting.

A few minutes later Ducky shoved a teacup and the bottle of McCallan toward Gibbs and sat back down.

Gibbs frowned, studying the Scotch placed in front of him without moving to touch it. "I came down here the other day and my team was sitting around this bottle like it was a shrine." He raised an eyebrow. "But they weren't drinking it."

"Hm." Ducky watched him keenly, wondering if the distraction was for his own benefit or Gibbs'. "A habit they picked up when they lost track of you last May. Anthony seemed to think that sitting and relaxing around a bottle of alcohol would provide some relief from the stress, even when they didn't want to risk impairing their judgement by drinking. As it turns out, Tony believes very strongly in the restorative power of the imagination. I don't imagine that's a surprise."

Gibbs snorted.

"Unconventional," Ducky smiled. "But he was able to keep them from slipping into despair. Even when it seemed unlikely that we would ever see you again."

Gibbs nodded. No parents, no siblings, a series of boarding schools. Being able to cheer himself up was probably one of Dinozzo's best tricks.

"He'll be a good team leader," Gibbs said casually. "If he ever wants to be one."

"He is rather attached to you, and to following wherever you go," Ducky acknowledged. He sipped his tea and looked Gibbs over sternly. "Luckily for all of us, it would seem. You most of all."

Silence in an autopsy wasn't like anywhere else. The surfaces were hard and the air was cool, and the quiet seemed to reverberate and grow. No wonder Ducky talked to himself.

"He reminded me recently that he raised himself," Gibbs said abruptly. "Basically."

Duck looked startled. If anything, Tony liked to remind his colleagues that he was a hotshot who went out with a lot of beautiful women - not that he'd once been a lonely little boy. Gibbs didn't tend to talk about the past at all, his own or anyone else's.

"Kind of like Gray," Gibbs added.

"Ah." Ducky sat back in his chair, stitching the threads of the conversation together. "So Tony has latched on to you, and now you listen to this recording and wonder if Gray has formed a similar attachment to O'Donnell?"

"Has he?"

"No, I think not."

Gibbs waited. But Ducky was always careful with his words precisely when Gibbs least wanted him to be.

"How do you know that, Duck?"

"Gray seems to show some . . . connection to this man, and you're worried that the conversation was entirely honest. That he really did have a connection. But _that_ wasn't honest. Not at all."

Gibbs stared at Ducky, urging him on.

The ME glanced at his notes. "O'Donnell asked a question first. Who else is there? And Gray answered truthfully, didn't he?" He looked up at Gibbs.

Gibbs nodded. "He was fishing for our locations. He called Dinozzo's line, not mine. But he knew that if I was around I would be brought in."

"He wanted to know if your team was in the building, if you were still looking for him and would try to trace the call, or if you had already found a clue to his whereabouts, and perhaps left to hunt him down. But O'Donnell didn't have to resort to subterfuge, did he, because Gray told him straight off that you were all present."

"Yeah."

Ducky grinned. "Gray is not so straightforward with you."

Gibbs ran a hand over his face and sighed. "No kidding."

"As far as we know they were both absolutely, technically honest with each other," Ducky said. "Even when the boy could not possibly have wanted to be. Even when it was absurd to be." Duck looked back down at his notes. "O'Donnell: Your mother's death was necessary. Do you feel badly? Gray: Yes."

Gibbs shook his head. "So you think it was an act, because it was so absurd? What about Stockholm, or - " he waved a hand " - some kind of conditioning. The kid was under this guy's control for a long time. Years."

Ducky looked at him shrewdly. "Perhaps he was. But Gray is under his own control now. To a remarkable degree."

Gibbs blew out a breath. He had thought that at first, too. Hoped it, really. If Duck was right, then Gray was just playing O'Donnell all through that call. He'd definitely gotten information out of him. Information that no one else could get, probably, about the way their agents and his mother died. Taken from that point of view, as just an exercise in gathering intel, the call was worth it.

But Gray had been gone for six days now, and Gibbs wasn't sure anymore if gathering intel was all it was. "How do you know that, Duck?"

The doctor went back to his notes. "Gray admits to leading Tony to the camp where you were held, and to killing eight men in Colombia. O'Donnell asks if Gray will tell him something amusing. Gray tells him about a man who gave himself away due to his own terror, and his prayers. O'Donnell is delighted with the story."

Ducky looked at him significantly. Gibbs cocked his head. "You think Gray made that up?"

"No. I think he gave O'Donnell exactly what he wanted to hear."

"A story about fear," Gibbs said slowly.

Ducky nodded, leaning forward. "A story about _showing_ fear. Giving a psychopath what he wants is a dangerous business, Jethro. O'Donnell clearly delights in the pain of others. We know from the scars the boy carries that the man deliberately, physically hurt him. He purposely taunts Tony with that knowledge. 'Not a blemish on him,' he said. And then later he asks Gray about it directly, when he says, 'Did they leave any marks?'"

Gibbs nodded.

"But Gray does not get angry. He doesn't react at all. When he tells Gray that his mother is dead, O'Donnell also says very deliberately that he knows Gray loved his mother. 'I know you have fond memories of her.' And Gray even plays it up. He sounds very young when he talks about her: 'They won't let me see . . . They think that I won't recognize her.' He is deliberately pointing out his own powerlessness, Jethro."

"Yeah, alright. He admitted that her death hurt him."

"Yes," Ducky said gravely. "He has learned that O'Donnell enjoys the pain of others. Enjoys control over others. So Gray gives him exactly that. His own pain. His own loss of power in this situation. O'Donnell goes on to insult women and Gray allows it, even tries to play along. But - and this is the key - he does not play along very well."

Gibbs nodded. "I know Gray's a better actor than that, if he wants to be. But I'm not sure that he would be good enough. O'Donnell was an interrogator. He would be able to spot a lie."

"I'm sure Gray is an excellent liar. But O'Donnell enjoyed making him uncomfortable, and so Gray gave him that. O'Donnell recalls killing a prostitute, linking it to the murder of the boy's mother, and presses Gray to acknowledge the connection as well. The man mocks the boy's faith, or at least his mother's faith. 'Still going to church to pray for your soul? . . . I have your mother's cross here. I was tempted to melt it down . . . I know there is no afterlife, but I liked the idea of pissing her off for all eternity.'"

Ducky raised his eyebrows.

"So you think Gray gave him the part about the guy praying because he knew O'Donnell would enjoy it."

"Yes. And more than that," Ducky leaned in, "Gray was obviously upset about having to kill that man. He would not have wanted to torture him. But O'Donnell asks anyway: 'Did you kill him slowly?'"

"That - wasn't an act, Duck," Gibbs said slowly. "Gray was out of it after that patrol."

"Yes. The boy uses that, Jethro, you see? He doesn't need to lie - he entices O'Donnell by truthfully showing these parts of himself. If it had not been so distressing for the boy, O'Donnell would not have been excited by it."

Gibbs tilted his head and rubbed at his jaw. Was this supposed to reassure him? Gray giving O'Donnell what he wanted to hear? "Well. It worked."

"Of course. O'Donnell is a sadist. Gray shows that he is upset and O'Donnell becomes aroused, no doubt predictably." Ducky's eyes glinted. "And then Gray skates around his first lie. O'Donnell says, 'We could have caught up face to face. What was all that drama about?' And Gray answers: 'We didn't know who it was. We don't stop for just anybody.'"

"O'Donnell called him on it," Gibbs pointed out. "He figured the kid was lying."

"Yes. Gray is talking to an interrogator, one who is able to spot this fairly obvious lie. Gray would not have stopped the car even if he did know it was O'Donnell. But they are both interrogators, aren't they? And both trying to protect themselves, to gain some intelligence regarding the other's situation. They are playing a game. And this also O'Donnell enjoys. He liked hearing Gray thank him for killing his mother, precisely because he knows Gray wishes his mother was still alive. He enjoys Gray pretending to accept sex with his torturer, particularly in front of "eavesdropping federal agents." It gives O'Donnell the power he craves, allows him to show off his supposed control over the boy. You told me that O'Donnell even agreed not to hurt Gray's family and friends. In exchange, Gray gives him what he wants, to a degree. I think that includes conversations like this one. And a promise to return to Colombia and to O'Donnell himself, sooner or later."

O'Donnell agreed not to hurt Gray's family. Right. "He killed the kid's mother, Duck."

"Yes. But a mother who has been estranged from him for some time, it seems. And O'Donnell is aware that Gray returned to one of those camps in order to release you. That was most decidedly outside of O'Donnell's control and interefered with his plans. A betrayal worthy of some punishment." Ducky paused, puzzled. "Gray gives O'Donnell what he wants in order to protect his friends. What I don't understand is why the man courts a relationship with the boy at all. It is interesting that he claims to have killed the mother quickly. For a man like O'Donnell that likely took quite a bit of discipline, if it's true. Admitting to torturing her would simply bring him more pleasure. Why wouldn't he torture her? And if he did, why would he lie and say he didn't?"

Gibbs rubbed his hands down his thighs, feeling tired. "Gray may have a legal claim to the cartel's land."

"Ah." Ducky frowned as he considered that. "So O'Donnell hoped that Gray would knock Londono off his throne. And open the path for his own rise?"

Gibbs nodded. "Seems like."

Ducky glanced up from his notes. "You do realize - in his own way this man may be sincerely courting Gray. The boy is intruiging, attractive to him. Potentially powerful. And he seems receptive to his . . . advances."

His advances.

Gibbs straightened his shoulders. He knew what Ducky meant. Duck said it that way out of respect for Gray's privacy, even in a conversation Gray would never hear.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I realize that."

"And O'Donnell convinced himself that the boy actually is receptive, even if Gray has also always been wary." Ducky harrumphed, eyes still on his scrawled notes. "Sadistic. Intelligent, clearly. And utterly delusional."

Gibbs looked at him sharply, and Ducky caught it. He observed Gibbs openly, finally, with the eyes of a scientist, trained to miss nothing at all. "But you know most of this already," he said. "So what is it that you really came down here to ask me, Jethro?"

Gibbs sighed. "He's been gone six days, Duck. Kort doesn't know where he is. He says Cass and the other kids don't know either."

"You want to know if he will come back."

Gibbs gave him a sideways nod.

"Or if he will run. Or press for power within the cartel," Ducky concluded, "and perhaps continue to work with men like O'Donnell." The doctor sat back and removed his reading glasses, tucking them into the breast pocket of his lab coat. "Men he is clearly capable of manipulating."

Gibbs flexed his hands, wishing he was far from here. Far from the person he was - one who knew just how likely it was that Gray would return to the only home he had ever really known. "It's clear from this call that the kid could . . . handle him."

"Yes. But it is also clear that he is extremely angry," Ducky said quietly. "I think he will return to you, Jethro. But I know that he would never go willingly to O'Donnell."

Gibbs looked at him closely. "You're sure of that?"

"You are worried about this sadist's ties to Gray because the boy appears to have an honest conversation with him. Gray seems to be under the man's control, even accepting his guidance, however reluctantly. But that is exactly what Gray wanted O'Donnell to believe. We know that it was not honest at all. You wonder if the boy could lie convincingly enough to fool O'Donnell." Ducky actually chuckled. "And here he's fooled you both!"

The doctor waited expectantly for Gibbs' eureka moment.

Gibbs shook his head. "Not following, Duck."

The ME huffed. "I know you believe that I was upset to the point of stupidity on the night that I removed a bullet from Gray's leg. But I was not so completely befuddled that I could not hear and understand the more heated parts of a conversation in the next room," he prodded.

Gibbs frowned, reaching in his memory for that night. Ducky had been in the kitchen, and Gibbs . . . "I goaded Gray into admitting that he was trying to protect other kids. And I implied that he'd failed."

"Yes, you provoked him. And Gray counterattacked rather well, didn't he. He went for the throat."

Gray had thrown Shannon and Kelly at him. "He was angry," Gibbs acknowledged.

"Yes. And he didn't hesitate to show it. Jethro," Ducky continued, "the boy has asked you for assistance all of three times, correct? Once when he was in jail. Again when he was shot. And finally when he was chased by O'Donnell. What does that tell you?"

Gibbs had his eureka moment.

Not because of any of those things Ducky said - not exactly. He remembered Gray's face outside a police station on a bright fall morning. That one human moment, admitting he couldn't stand being locked up. He remembered Gray's voice the night he'd been shot, breaking with fatigue and grief, and the fear of an addiction he couldn't control. He remembered Gray stalking into his home after O'Donnell pursued his family through DC, how he held a gun, cool and dangerous, to McGee's head. Gibbs had allowed it, to a point. Had understood it. Because the kid was angry. But more than that - Gray was terrified.

"He was afraid," Gibbs remembered. Of course he was. O'Donnell was powerful enough to hunt the kids from halfway around the world if he decided he wanted to. Gibbs had simply put that knowledge aside, because - "But he didn't show it."

"No," Ducky agreed. "Pain arouses a sadist. But an expression of fear or anger would very likely provoke him."

"Gray reassured him," Gibbs said slowly. "He gave him pain, but not fear. He bought us time."

"Yes."

"And you think he'll come back?" Gibbs said doubtfully.

"I'm not saying he'll be happy when he does," Ducky said briskly. "But you have seen him angry and scared before. You know what he's most likely to do."

When Ziva was attacked. When the kids were chased. When Gray was thrown around by those FBI agents, and when he'd been pressed brutally by Gibbs himself. Gray said it made the most sense to join overwhelming enemies, or to run from them. Maybe he even believed that. But it wasn't what he actually did.

"He fights."

Ducky smiled. "He certainly does."

**x**

It was the afternoon of the seventh day. McGee poked his head into the observation room where Gibbs sat staring at Hanlan and Kort. The informant had been explaining what he knew of Londono's team of accountants. For five hours. Hanlan was helped by visual aides like maps of various cities and a cardboard crate full of photographs and financial documents.

Kort seemed to be interested in the security of a cottage that Hanlan had visited exactly once, three years ago.

Gibbs was mostly wondering if he would have had assignments that were more or less boring than this one if he'd stayed in the Marines all those years ago. But even the question implied that more boring was out there, and really, was that even possible?

"Boss," McGee whispered. He still whispered here, even though there was no reason to - the interrogation rooms were soundproof. Gibbs gestured for him to go on, not looking away from Hanlan's bland face. "Security just called up."

Gibbs waited for the big reveal, but nothing followed. He glanced to the door to find McGee distracted by the interview, watching avidly as Kort and Hanlan poured over a stack of spreadsheets.

Really?

"McGee!"

McGee snapped to attention so fast he almost slammed the door on himself. "Oh - uh, Cassandra and Thomas Gray are here to see you."

Really.

Gibbs stood, happily handing McGee the pad of paper and the pen that had balanced on his lap, pointing to the chair he'd just gotten out of as he walked out of the room. They weren't recording the interviews - any electronic documentation felt like a risk. "Notes, McGee. Don't miss anything."

Ziva had escorted the kids to a conference room. When Gibbs found them they were looking out the far window at the ships and the water, Ziva pointing out landmarks against the setting sun.

Gibbs entered quietly and settled into a chair. Cassie turned a minute later, not at all startled to see Gibbs at the table. She took a seat across from him and Tomas sat beside her.

"Hi."

"Hi," she answered. And paused.

Gibbs studied her curiously. She hadn't been this shy since their first meeting. "How are you, Cassie?"

"Fine. And you?"

Gibbs nodded. "No school today?"

"It's almost 5 o'clock," Cassie said.

Gibbs checked his watch and smiled slightly.

Cassie looked at him like she was on to him, but would humor Gibbs anyway. "But yes. During school hours we were in school today. Ziva called and said it was probably safe to go back."

Gibbs nodded thoughtfully. "How about Sean? He in school today?"

"I do not know," she said evenly. "If he is, it is not at his old school."

"You haven't had any further contact with Gray?"

"No."

Gibbs rested his chin in his hand. "I'd like to talk to him," he said easily. "If you know where he is."

"I do not."

She fell silent. They sat there for almost a minute, neither of the kids moving a muscle. "Why are you here, Cassie?"

"We do not know as many of the leaders as Gray," she said promptly. "But we know many of them. We can help you."

A beat of silence.

"You do not have to do that," Ziva said.

Cassie's face registered slight surprise. "I know." She hesitated. "You do not need the information?"

Gibbs wished he could say they didn't. But they absolutely did.

Half an hour later McGee and Tomas lugged the last of the printed surveillance into the conference room. Gibbs posted a guard at the door as Tomas and Cassie began sorting through endless photographs, looking for targets.

Gibbs ordered the kids a pizza and kicked them out after three hours, locking the door to the conference room behind them and telling them half jokingly to go do their homework. They nodded seriously, turned down his offer of a ride, and told him they would be back tomorrow afternoon.

He had his own team pack it in a few hours later. Sifting intel was grinding work. They needed to be sharp to be any good at it, and after a fourteen hour day they simply weren't. Tony stood and stretched theatrically. McGee had perked up and begun clicking away at his computer, doing whatever he did on the thing in his down time.

"Gibbs."

He turned to look at Ziva. She'd put on her coat and come to stand by his desk.

"Kort is still interviewing Hanlan."

Gibbs touched the power button on his computer and stood, picking up his own coat. "Yeah?" So?

She didn't say anything more. But she held his hard stare confidently, eyes dark and knowing. The unflinching gaze of a woman intimidated by nothing.

Out of the corner of his eye Gibbs could see Tony stalling, listening.

Kort had avoided them all. But Gibbs didn't have to be all that close to recognize a man coming apart at the seams. He doubted any of his team had missed it, though Kort was composed as ever, always in rigid control as he pressed Hanlan and squeezed the others.

Hour after hour after hour.

As far as Gibbs knew Kort hadn't left the building for more than a few minutes all week. He'd been showering in the gym locker room, crashing for a few hours a night on Ducky's autopsy tables. And every day that Gray stayed gone seemed to carve another year into his face.

"Get out of here, all of you," Gibbs emphasized. He tossed a warning look at McGee, still riveted to his computer, and glanced at his watch. It was 2300. "Be back at 0800."

They nodded and murmured agreeably and made a show of gathering their things, watching him walk to the elevator and punch the button that would take him down to the interrogation suite.

He glared back at them as he stepped in. "Go home!"

But they were nosy and stubborn and pretty much fearless - just as he trained them to be. So when he passed their floor with Kort in tow a few minutes later he wasn't exactly surprised to feel the elevator stop, and watch as the doors opened to reveal his team.

"Hey Boss." Tony grinned and stepped into the car, followed closely by McGee and Ziva. He pushed the already lit button for the ground floor and bounced a bit, relaxed and curious and completely Tony.

Gibbs grunted. Tim looked down at the floor, awkward in the silence of their crowded little box. Ziva blatantly stared at Kort. The CIA agent ignored them all. They were silent as they walked to their cars. And then Kort finally spoke to them, for what felt like the first time in days.

"Stay out of this," he muttered, and quickened his steps, outpacing them.

Gibbs was already slowing, looking around, hand to his hip. Ziva frowned at Kort and stopped dead, drawing her gun, sweeping the line of cars closest to them. Tony and McGee, long used to the others' instincts, followed suit. Their eyes tracked Kort's gaze to the dark line of cars, and the sights of their guns leveled on Gray as he stepped out from the shadows.

* * *

 

_a/n: "Truthiness" is a Colbert Nation word._


	31. Let Me Go

Kort stopped, and the agents fanned out around him, peering at Gray through the shadows. Gray didn't stop. His stride toward Kort was smooth until his left shoulder dipped and his right fist swung up, thrown with every ounce of power his body could give him. Kort dodged the first swing easily, and the one after that, efficient, barely moving.

Kort would tire him, Gibbs thought. Kort would tire him and then they would talk it out. 

But Gray didn't tire. He kept coming, pushing Kort back, finally connecting with a kick to the knee. Kurt staggered and Gray flew into the advantage, a blur of violence. A minute in and Kort was bleeding, retreating, protecting his core.

Kort stopped dodging and tried trapping Gray's arms. Gray kicked out a foot and followed up with a backhand that caught Kort under the chin and smashed up his face, blood from his mouth and a cut over his eye spraying the air. And then Kort was on his knees, disoriented. The lethal figure standing over him already moving into another blow. Gray didn't have a scratch on him. Kort hadn't thrown a punch.

Kort launched forward, grabbing Gray around the body and wrenching him down to the asphalt, dead weight limiting Gray's movement. Their bodies heaved together for a few seconds, both of them sucking in air, and then Gray jerked under him.

"Enough," Kort growled.

Gray's body moved with Kort's breath, using the inch to slam up. The shock of it and his skinny frame gave Gray just enough. Kort grabbed for him but Gray was already slipping away, and they were standing, circling, stances so similar Gibbs knew instantly it was Kort who taught him this.

Gray reached down to his leg and a blade whispered into his hand. The teams' pistols jerked up again, automatic response to the weapon. Gibbs shifted, gun trained on one of the kid's legs, eyes fixed on Gray's face. There wasn't a shadow of doubt there, or of anything else. The hesitation that had saved Dinozzo and probably Abby was gone.

Kort's hand moved back toward Gibbs, another silent _stay out of it_.

Gray struck with his left fist and Kort ignored it, focus on the knife. Gray punched him again, brought up a leg in a low kick, the force of it knocking Kort's upper body forward. The blade swung up to meet him and Gibbs' breath froze in his lungs.

Finally, then, the peacekeeper Kort was trying to be was gone. He attacked, exploding into Gray, one arm knocking the knife hand to the side easily, the other fist slamming into Gray's face. Gray's body arched and flew back, following his head down to the pavement.

Gibbs' first thought was that Gray was unconscious. He was that still.

But then he rolled to his feet, blood running from his nose and the side of his head. He grinned, teeth bloody under the parking lot lights. The next second he was moving again. Coming forward for more.

The CIA agent tried again to trap him, took two more blows before an upward stab of the blade almost reached his gut. Kort brought a leg up into Gray's body, lifting his lighter opponent and slamming him back once more, sending Gray crashing to the pavement.

Gray pushed to his feet and came forward again.

"Gray. Enough - " Kort went for the knife, but Gray kept it in reserve, forcing Kort to lunge for it, to leave his midsection open. Kort swept the knife arm down and drove a fist into Gray's shoulder with shattering power. Gray crumpled to his knees. 

Gibbs didn't know how the kid held onto the knife, but he did. Gray would hold on and keep coming until Kort beat him unconscious - or worse. "Trent," Gibbs said, quiet. "End it."

Kort's arms jerked out, useless frustration, like a man backed into a corner. "Alright. Just - " He wiped blood from his face, sharp movement annoyed, and Gray stilled, furious and expectant, teetering on the edge of another assault.

"Fine. I knew where she was," Kort said flatly. "But I couldn't get her out. No one could. Knowing - " He shrugged, stiff. "It didn't matter."

Gray wiped his knife idly on his pants. He'd caught Kort's arm with it and the blade smeared red. "Only asked for one thing," he said finally.

Kort was silent, staring at the boy in front of him like he didn't know the words.

"When," Gray said listlessly.

"Two years ago."

Gray tipped his head back a bit, squinting into the dark sky like if he looked away, looked far and hard enough, what was right in front of him would be bearable.

"She was already with Londono," Kort said heavily. "It would have been suicide to try for her."

Gray didn't look at Kort, or anyone else. He addressed the horizon, like he was sending his questions up to the sky, to the stars or to God. To no one in that dark lot. "Why?"

When it finally came Kort's answer was half-hearted. "His security – "

Gray laughed, sandpaper on metal. "You can cut the shit. You think I don't already know?" And then his eyes found Kort's. "It's over. You and me. We're done."

Kort wiped his hands on his shirt, gesture tired. "You don't have to run. Help us get the – "

"Shut up. You think I give a shit? I don't want them."

"If I told you where she was you'd have gone after her! You'd be dead," Kort said impatiently. "Before you ever left. Is that what you wanted?"

"I wanted the truth." Gray sounded bitter, amused, as if he knew now he had asked for some impossible feat.

Kort was silent.

"She didn't want to leave him," Gray probed.

Still Kort was silent.

"She knew where I was."

Kort shook his head. But not exactly in denial. "That's - it's not that – "

"Shut up, everything you say is worthless. And you stay away from us," Gray said, low. A threat. "All of us." He turned, already moving away.

Kort didn't hesitate. He went after him. "Hold - Gray - "

Kort leapt back from the knife, and then forward, wrestling in earnest now, shoving Gray into the cars behind him. Gray spun out of his grip and they slammed into a van. Kort used the solid weight at his back to steady himself. Gray swung into him low with one hand and went high with the other. The knife was a blur, cutting down to Kort's chest. The agents watching lurched forward, and Kort seized the boy's shoulders, too late. The knife whipped home. 

It struck the window next to Kort's shoulder and cracked it. Gray's fist rammed down the hilt, following the blade into the glass.

Gray and Kort stared at each other. And then Kort looked to his side, to Gray's hand.

Gray turned his face away, but his body was trapped, shoulders immobile under Kort's weight. Gray's fist drew back from the cracked glass and forward again in a blur, body twisting, hitting the window with a crunch that could have been glass and could have been bone. 

This time when Gray turned and shoved away Kort stayed where he was. Gibbs stepped forward and blocked Gray's path instead.

The kid swayed in front of him, blood dripping from the limp hand at his side. Gibbs noticed that he looked dirty, thinner than he had just a week ago.

"Let me go, Gibbs."

Gibbs cocked his head, as if he was considering it. "Someone needs to look at that hand."

"It's fine."

Gibbs stepped forward.

"I can take care of it," Gray insisted.

"No," Gibbs said, and stepped forward again, holstering his weapon. "I don't think you can."

Gray backed away, but he was being pushed toward the NCIS agents closing in behind him, and a quick glance over his shoulder confirmed it. "You don't owe me," he said hastily. "I don't owe you. It's done."

"It's not done," Gibbs said. "Not yet."

Gray shook his head. He stopped moving back and edged to Gibbs' side instead, toward an opening in the cars. Gibbs reached for him fast and Gray dodged. But he was hemmed in by the cars and the agents and his own injuries, and Gibbs caught him, wrapped him securely in his arms, trying all the while not to touch him too much. Gray breathed deliberately, carefully, trying to rein it in. "Let me go."

The kid's usual iron posture felt brittle, like something ancient that would crumble at a touch.

"It's going to be okay, Gray." His shoulders heaved under Gibbs, shaky, and Gibbs figured he might as well go in for the kill. "We got him, you know." He whispered it into Gray's ear, skin crawling with the intimacy. "O'Donnell. Diablo. He's dead."

Gray went low and abruptly slammed into him, knocking Gibbs to the side. Gibbs absorbed the blow and went down against a car. But he brought Gray with him, cushioned from the fall, and they ended up propped against a fender. It would be easier if Gray was on the ground, but Gibbs didn't want to try pinning him. He held him tight against his body instead, accepting the violence as Gray struggled.

Gray was smaller - it was shocking how small - worn out and hurt. Gradually he stopped, and then he went rigid, hunched in Gibbs' arms. For a moment it seemed the only thing that moved was the blood running over Gray's hand, dripping onto the pavement. He'd cut himself on the blade, mangled his fist in the glass. Gibbs used the car behind him to stand, cradling Gray in his arms, shifting dead weight against his body until he was secure.

"Dinozzo, you're with me. Call Ducky, get him in here. McGee, deal with security and these cars. Ziva - " Gibbs nodded in Kort's direction and took off for the NCIS building, Gray in his arms, Dinozzo on his heels.


	32. First Aid

"Ducky's ETA is twenty minutes." Tony closed his phone, trotting beside Gibbs to keep up. They pushed through the outer doors to the lobby. "He's not happy we're not heading straight to Bethesda."

Gibbs swept past the night guards without slowing down. "Needs a doctor," he said, and added a glare. "Mallard's on his way in."

It was after hours. It was Gibbs. And whatever of Gray was visible was smeared with blood. Security waved them through.

In the elevator Tony stared at the boy in Gibbs' arms like Gray had sprouted scales. Gray's eyes were closed, skin pale, sweaty, body trembling. Shock, Gibbs guessed.

"Get the blanket from Abby's lab."

Tony nodded.

They stepped off the elevator and Gibbs pushed toward autopsy, never more grateful for automatic doors. By the time Dinozzo came in with the big black fleec, he had Gray on a table, settled against him.

"Gauze, Dinozzo."

Gibbs wrapped the blanket around him and reached for Gray's injured hand. He elevated it, turning the bleeding palm to inspect it. Two cuts, one through his fingers and one through the palm.

Kid was lucky he still had fingers.

"That's deep," Tony muttered, the roll of gauze unraveling in his hands. "Glass on the outside?"

Gibbs twisted the hand in his, looked for anything obvious glittering in the scratches bleeding freely down the wrist. "Nothing big. Wrap it up."

Tony wrapped the palm and fingers and the outer cuts expertly, moving as quickly as he could. Gray's eyes were screwed shut, his breathing ragged, heaving. The kid was going to pieces.

When Tony was done Gibbs continued to hold the arm up, hoping to keep the blood loss to a minimum, and used his other hand to push Gray's shoulders forward. "Put your head down."

Gray pulled on the elevated hand and growled with what little breath he had until Gibbs let it go. Once free he put his head down toward his knees, no argument.

Tony moved away to the swivel chair. Gibbs sat beside Gray. Eight long minutes before gasps subsided to normal breathing. When it was over Gray pulled up a little and Gibbs removed the hand that had been on his back. Dinozzo wet a couple paper towels and Gray wiped his face.

Gibbs felt the minutes tick by. 

Ordinarily he was all for quiet time. But he wasn't sure that this was the best moment for it. He could practically hear the kid's mind start to buzz in the silence. Even Dinozzo was utterly still in Ducky's swivel chair – a first, as far as Gibbs knew.

When Gibbs looked down Gray was still hunched over beside him, elbows on his knees. "You alright?"

A nod.

"That happen to you before?"

Nothing. But Gibbs could tell it had.

"What do you think about?"

No response.

"Had a friend who got panic attacks," Gibbs said casually. "You're supposed to think about calming things, aren't you?"

"It's not panic."

Right. And Gibbs was Santa Claus in a polo shirt. 

"No? What is it?"

A shrug.

"But you think happy thoughts to control it?"

Nothing.

Gibbs grit his teeth and put his hand on Gray's back again. Asserting dominance easily, completely. "Happy thoughts?"

Gray cleared his throat, hunched under Gibbs' hand, staring at Ducky's shiny floor. "Sort of."

His voice was quiet and hoarse as hell, but the words were clear. Inching toward calm. Gibbs pushed it, hoping to keep Gray's mind focused, locked on something neutral. Maybe even something sort of happy.

"Sort of happy? Like what?"

"Whatever. Stuff." Gray rolled his good shoulder, reluctant. 

Gibbs didn't care. "Like?"

Another irritated roll. Gibbs almost smiled.

"Soccer. Ice cream. Tomatoes. Wally. Sex - a long slow fuck. You want me to go on?"

No surprise he had the happy thoughts of a smart ass. But sarcasm was a lot better than panic in Gibbs' book.

"Who's Wally?"

A bone weary sigh. "A movie Sean likes."

Gibbs stared at the back of Gray's sweaty head.

"WALL - E," Dinozzo drawled. "About a robot in love, boss."

"Yeah," Gray agreed faintly. "WALL-E."

Okay. So the sex didn't have anything to do with Wally. Hopefully, if it was a robot.

"Huh. Tomatoes?"

A long pause. "I've got tomatoes."

His voice was flat with fatigue and it would be normal to be pretty spacey after a meltdown like that. But tomatoes?

Gibbs looked to Dinozzo. Tony shook his head, as lost as Gibbs.

"In summer," Gray explained into the silence. "And cucumbers. Zucchini. Sunflowers . . ."

Gibbs blinked. "You have a vegetable garden?"

A shrug.

Gibbs was silent, but in an expectant way, and Gray went on, still mutinously cooperative. Gibbs didn't know if that was about leftover panic or something else. "Couldn't stop thinking about fighting," Gray said. "Holly said that wasn't good. Kept saying her garden was soothing."

"Let me guess. You didn't think farming would be soothing," Gibbs said drily.

"She came - over - " Gray broke off abruptly and shook his head. Gibbs looked down, surprised, as a tremor ran up the kid's back.

Shit.

But Dinozzo piped up, propping an elbow on Ducky's desk. " _Holly Snow_  hoed your garden?"

Gray snorted. More tremors.

"What did she wear?" Tony said dreamily.

Gray glanced up, finally, and made what Gibbs could only assume was an obscene gesture. Kid was definitely laughing now, a little hysterically, holding his least injured hand to his ribs.

Gibbs opened his mouth to protest that gesture, but Dinozzo beat him to it.

"Overalls?" he said doubtfully.

A nod. "Good overalls," Gray grinned, voice wavering, and wiped tears from his eyes. "Hot overalls."

"Tomatoes."

"Yeah."

"I've got to get to that clinic," Dinozzo sighed.

Gibbs frowned, but Gray beat him to it. "Ziva's little army would have your balls."

"Yep," Dinozzo smiled wistfully. "Probably."

Gray looked, more aware than he'd been before. The laughter was gone as quickly as it came. "She here?"

Tony looked calmly to Gibbs.

"Care of remains is the autopsy assistant's job," Gibbs said. "He's not here at the moment."

It was true that his mother's remains – what there was of them – were put into cold storage by the autopsy gremlin. What Gray couldn't possibly know was that Palmer's storage area meant the steel drawers directly behind them. and the chart that would tell them exactly which drawer she was in was hanging right over the ME's desk, like it always was.

Gray was looking at him suspiciously. Gibbs met his eyes nonchalantly and wondered where the hell Ducky was.

Dinozzo rescued him. "How come you could get into NCIS but you couldn't get into our autopsy room?"

Gray's eyes left Gibbs' slowly. "Getting in wasn't the problem."

Dinozzo frowned. And then he got it. "Not enough people down here – you'd be noticed. And Ducky would recognize you. You needed an agent with you to look legit, huh?"

"Maybe the people down here are just more observant than the field agents upstairs," Gibbs said idly.

Dinozzo looked appropriately wounded.

Gray's good hand curled into a fist. "He here?"

"No," Gibbs said.

"How do you know," Gray's voice was hoarse still, but harder now. "How do you know he's dead?"

Gibbs passed a hand over his eyes. "Not here, Gray." Gray's body went hard, and after a second he began to work his way to the edge of the table. Gibbs took his good arm before he could hop down and pulled him back gently, mindful of the shoulder. "We can't talk about it here. But I'm sure he's dead, and I will tell you about it later."

Blank eyes. What did that mean? Suspicion? Betrayal? "He's gone, Gray. I promise you that. And we'll talk about it later."

Gray just looked at him. Gibbs wasn't sure if that meant agreement or not.

And that's when Ducky stalked in. He glared at Gibbs so ferociously Gibbs released his grip on Gray automatically. The kid at his side scooted away slightly, like he didn't want to catch Ducky's wrath. But the doctor's words, and the eyes he turned on Gray, were kind. "My dear boy. We must stop meeting like this."

"I'm fine," Gray protested.

Ducky snorted. "You were in a brawl with Trent Kort." He cast a glance theatrically around the morgue, looking for the body as he shrugged out of his coat and hat and moved toward the sink to wash up. "And he is?"

"Fine," Gibbs said shortly.

Ducky raised an eyebrow and left it alone.

"Well, let's take a look at you." Duck considered Gray carefully, taking in the blanket tucked around him and the white wrapped hand. "Is your hand the worst of it?"

"Yeah."

"Anything else?"

Gray shook his head.

"Punched in the shoulder, gut and jaw," Gibbs said. "Cuts on the hand are deep. Might have hit his head." He thought a moment. "Don't know if he's got anything else – from before the fight."

Ducky looked swiftly at Gibbs and then back to the hand.

He pulled out a stethoscope and gestured to Gray's shirt. "May I?"

Ducky listened to his chest. "Heart rate is fast, but not dangerously so. Breath sounds normal. I would just like to feel along your jaw, if that is alright?"

A positively shy nod, and Ducky skimmed over the bones in Gray's face, over his skull, and shone a penlight into his eyes and mouth. "A bump on the back of the head, certainly, but no sign of concussion. Lucky. And no broken teeth."

Ducky lifted Gray's uninjured hand and palpitated the fingers, red from connecting with Kort's harder bits. Then he touched the skin, pinching it gently. "You appear dehydrated. Do you think that likely?"

A shrug. Definitely a yes.

Ducky gestured toward the sink. "Could you get us some water, Anthony? And then perhaps some juice from the vending machines." Dinozzo hopped to, Gray's eyes tracking him to the sink and back, and then out of the room.

Did that mean Dinozzo made him nervous? Or that he was more nervous without Dinozzo in the room? Maybe he just kept track automatically, no matter who it was. Gibbs couldn't tell.

Ducky moved on to the shoulder Gibbs indicated, ghosting over it. Gray made no sign that any of it hurt. He never had.

"The shoulder seems swollen, but not out of place. Have you ever dislocated it?"

Gray shook his head.

"Well, another piece of luck. And now your hand I think. If I'm not mistaken this is Tony's work, eh?"

Gray held it out carelessly and Ducky cut through the wad of gauze, already sticky with blood on the bottom layers. Duck took one look at the wound itself and reached for fresh gauze to wrap it up again. "This needs an orthopedic surgeon."

Gray looked amused. Tired, but amused. "It's fine." He straightened at Ducky's severe look. "I mean, it'll heal."

"Yes," Ducky agreed. "Of course it will. But you will need x-rays to check for fractures, which I suspect you do have. Those may in turn need internal pins to set correctly, or surgery to remove bone fragments."

"It's not – "

"Of far greater concern, in my opinion – which, you understand, is an expert  _medical_  opinion, and not your own macho flight of fancy – is that you have almost certainly cut through tendons and nerves running to your fingers. That means your hand will not work as well as it did before. Without treatment you could lose the ability to grip." Ducky demonstrated with his own hand. "A specialist will be able to see if surgery could limit loss of function."

Damn. Gibbs rubbed a hand down his face.

"I don't care," the kid said.

Ducky nodded understandingly, calmly wrapping the wound. "I understand. But I do care." Duck held up a hand when Gray shook his head. "You are young, Gray. You don't know how an injury like this could limit your options later in life." Duck searched the kid's eyes intently and went back to wrapping the hand. "If we can possibly keep loss of movement or even loss of strength to a minimum then I would very much like to try. What do you say?"

Gibbs eyed Ducky appraisingly. Duck never talked about treatment like that. When they were hurt it was Ducky's way or the highway, and it was generally understood that the highway meant a couple of Navy Yard Marines hauling you off to get it done Ducky's way regardless.

Gray's eyes went quickly to the autopsy room doors, and Gibbs smiled grimly. He understood the urge to run.

The kid's gaze worked its way back to Ducky. "I did this to myself," he said evenly, nodding at his hand. He was quiet then, as if that would be enough to change Ducky's mind.

"Yes, I know," Ducky said briskly. "I have seen these types of wounds before. But how you were injured is not something that is of primary importance – not at the moment, at any rate." He snipped the end of the gauze and secured it with tape. "Can you walk?"

Gray shook his head, more firmly. "You don't – I can't go to the hospital – "

"Can you walk, or do you want me to carry you?" Gibbs interrupted.

"I can walk," Gray said slowly. "But not to your hospital."

Gibbs nodded, flipped open his phone, and called Kort.

**x**

Ziva looked Kort over critically. He was leaning against the car, motionless next to the broken, red-flecked window.

"Come on," she said, and seized an arm, hauling him forward. "McGee will be returning with security to look after this. It would be best if we were no longer here."

She had no doubt Kort would walk without her if he could, but his knee had been kicked in a direction that no knee should go, and he hobbled along with her assistance.

"Where are we going?" he muttered.

"There is a first aid kit in our team car. I am taking you there." She paused. "Do you think you need a doctor?"

"No."

They limped silently through the lot, but Kort shook her off when they got close.

"I'm fine. My car is just there." He gestured to a demure black sports car sitting a few rows down and pivoted awkwardly toward it.

"You can't leave," she said firmly. "Gibbs may need you here. Sit." She maneuvered him toward the NCIS Charger, popped the door, and shoved him into the back seat while she went to the trunk to retrieve the kit. She reappeared with it a moment later, along with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water.

Ziva wet the towels and went for his head, but he grabbed them from her hands. "I don't need a nursemaid."

"Good," she said. "I am not a nurse. Or a maid."

But she stood back and let him scrub the blood from his face, and finally press the wet towels to the oozing cut on his forehead. After a minute she wordlessly moved in again and cleaned the areas he'd missed, and when he let his hand drop applied peroxide and two pieces of tape to keep it more or less closed.

"Your arm is bleeding. Take off your jacket. And your hand is cut as well."

Kort looked down at his hand as if he hadn't noticed, and didn't care. He must have cut it on Gray's teeth, or grazed it on a car. He shook his head and leaned sideways into the seat, too tired to respond.

She rolled up his shirtsleeve herself and inspected the forearm. The cut was clean - no surprise there. Gray's knife was probably honed to the edge of a razor.

"This needs stitches."

He didn't respond at all, so she put some gauze over it and taped it as best she could, closing the ruined sleeve and washing the torn knuckles silently, applying more of the stinging disinfectant. "Not very serious. But it will heal faster this way," she murmured when she finished, and looked the rest of his exposed skin over carefully. It looked intact.

"Anywhere else?" Ziva knelt in front of him and reached for his pant leg, fortunately loose, and began hitching it up. "Do you think he injured your ribs?"

Kort opened his eyes when cool air alerted him to the fact that his pants had been eased up over his knee. She was inspecting the joint closely, running fingers featherlight over a kneecap already lumpy and numb with scar tissue. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She raised an eyebrow, but didn't look up. "This is not obviously broken or dislocated, but it is already swelling," she observed. "The soft tissues have been strained, at least. We should elevate and apply a cold pack. Ducky will want to look at it."

He stared at her as if she had grown another head. "I'm not one of Mallard's wards."

"You have been sleeping in his autopsy room for days," she pointed out, cool and steady, as she almost always was. "And you are working with Gibbs' team. The team doctor will treat your injuries."

"I'm not injured."

She strapped a thin chemical cold pack to the point of impact on his knee and eased the pant leg over it. "This pack should be cycled on and off for fifteen minutes every hour," she said, as if he didn't already know that. Next she dug through the kit for something anti-inflammatory, coming up a few seconds later with a single dose packet of Motrin. "Cold and elevation will ease the swelling. As will these," she said, and handed him first the pills, then the bottle of water.

He swallowed the pills and set the water next to him in the car.

"Thank you," he said lowly.

She reached for his shirt.

He watched her hands move toward him incredulously. "You don't – "

"If you have fractured ribs they should be x-rayed. I can tell by touch if any are seriously broken. But Ducky will check later as well. Perhaps he will insist on an x-ray in any case. And a CAT scan." For being so constant her voice was oddly soothing. "You took several blows to the kidneys. Do you have pain in your lower back?"

"No," he said. He sounded uncertain.

She unbuttoned the shirt methodically, pretending not to notice when he closed his eyes and turned his face away.

Her fingers were cool, delicate over the blotches of red skin that took the brunt of the damage. "Your breathing is shallow. Does it hurt to breathe?"

"No."

She took her time.

"You taught him well," she observed.

Kort took in air deliberately, evenly. Her hands were surprisingly soft, for a woman with her skills, and gentle as they ran slowly up the sides of his body.

"O'Donnell was a rival to Gray's father," he said eventually. "Not a very nice one." He grunted as she pressed at a sore spot.

"Yes?" Ziva focused on the sore spots now.

"After his father was killed Gray had no protector." Kort gritted his teeth against a flare of pain in his abdomen. "And O'Donnell had no rival to keep him in check. He decided he liked to watch Gray fight. He'd pit him against bigger opponents. Older boys, men. Watch him beaten."

"Gibbs seems to think you assassinated Daniel Conlon."

Kort didn't say anything. Perhaps he thought this was some Mossad interrogation technique. Kill them with kindness.

"You killed his father, which exposed him to O'Donnell. So you taught Gray to fight. To protect himself." She moved her hands to his left side.

"Protecting him wasn't possible."

"To defend himself, then."

"I taught him what I could before I was transferred out of Colombia. We sparred many times," he said, off-hand. "Never with weapons. . . . I never hit him."

"He did not give you a choice tonight." Kort didn't reply. "He wanted you to hit him back. Any one of us would have done the same."

He shrugged slightly.

"Is that why you did not want me around him, at first. Because you thought I wouldn't protect him?"

"No."

"Because I didn't protect those other boys."

He shook his head.

Her hand rested against his heart, briefly. "I don't believe you."

He knew he should push her away. Put himself together and go home. But he was too tired to move. He damn well hurt all over. And the touch felt good.

Kort inhaled, stiff, and looked away again. "I thought you would think you knew him already. That you would think he was a killer beyond redemption. I thought you wouldn't trust him. That he would remind you of mistakes, make you angry, be a distraction. I thought you would think he didn't deserve it – your protection." He paused. "But I knew you would protect him anyway."

She nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps you are right. I did think those things, in the beginning. But he showed me . . . that there was more to him than I first saw. Like the boys who died in my care. There was more there than I wanted to see at the time. I know that now." She buttoned the shirt back up and smoothed it down. "I think you are all right."

He nodded and she helped him shift back and prop his foot up on the door, elevating his knee. They sat together in the car, quiet. Waiting for news.

When his phone finally rang Kort glanced at the Caller ID and flipped it open cautiously, hitting the speaker button. "Kort."

"He needs an orthopedic surgeon. Where do we take him?"

Dr. Mallard was faint but distinct in the background. "Jethro, orthopedics at Bethesda are among the best in the country. I see no reason to visit some CIA back alley quack - "

"Washington Central," Kort said. "The agency keeps a suite there. It's secure. Go to private admitting, not the ER. You can give them Holdner's name."

There was murmuring in the background. Something approving about Central's operating room statistics.

"Meet us there," Gibbs said, and hung up.

 


	33. Clever Boys

Kort looked at the phone in his hand, and then at Ziva.

"He wants you to repair your relationship with Gray," she said simply.

Kort shook his head. "That isn't - "

"The sooner the better. Come, we will take your car, yes?" She smiled helpfully. "I will drive."

They beat Gibbs and Ducky to the hospital by miles, and eventually spotted them escorting an irritated Gray into one of the private rooms.

"He's hungry," Kort observed out of the blue. "They have room service here 24 hours a day, if he's allowed to eat." He frowned and scratched the stubble on his chin. "And now I am a nursemaid."

Ziva opened her phone and relayed the message.

Five hours later they were sleeping in the absurdly comfortable waiting room chairs when Gibbs and Ducky found them.

"Ah, Agent Kort." Ducky eyed him critically. "Sit up. Let's take a look."

"What?" Kort rubbed his head, blinking up at them. "Where is he?"

"Do be quiet." Ducky peered into Kort's bleary eyes with his pocket light. "Good." He took up Kort's hands and inspected the ripped but clean knuckles. "Very good." Then he pulled on his bloody sleeve. "What's this about?"

Kort tugged the arm back. "How is he?"

Ducky stood up to his full height. "This will be faster and easier if you're quiet and cooperative. Fast, or slow. That is your choice, Agent Kort."

Gibbs collapsed into the chair next to Ziva and smirked. "Just surrender. It's faster."

Kort looked at Gibbs, ignoring the doctor rolling up his shirtsleeve.

"You were right," Kort said.

"So were you," Gibbs replied evenly. "He was completely off the grid - we never would have found him."

"This needs stitches," Ducky observed. "And you took several blows to the body as well, I understand. Any shortness of breath? Are you passing blood?"

Kort frowned at him as if the very idea of internal bruising was offensive. "No."

"Hmm. I will get you in to see an intern. Anything else your doctor should be aware of?" He eyed the bulky knee propped on a nearby chair.

"No," Kort said firmly, and swung his leg down. "I've already been thoroughly examined by Agent David."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow her way, and Ziva grinned sadistically.

"Very well." Ducky sat down in the chair opposite Kort. "To answer your initial question, Gray is exhausted, dehydrated, and has not eaten well in a week. At the moment he is resting and receiving fluids. Most of his physical injuries are superficial and will heal naturally with time, with the exception of his left hand. Fortunately they have a very good hand specialist here. He visually identified two tendon repairs and managed to complete the reattachments with local anesthetic. Gray also suffered two fractured fingers and broke a knuckle. He'll wear a light cast for eight weeks."

Gibbs sat silent through Ducky's spiel, tiredly watching a flow of strangers make its way through the lobby. But Kort was alert, sharp eyes fixed on the doctor. "Long term?"

"As you may imagine he's received quite a few stitches, which will minimize scarring that could have interfered with dexterity. After the swelling goes down and the cast comes off they'll be able to check range of motion. Further treatment will be decided at that point. It is possible that he will fully recover, perhaps with additional surgery. It is also possible that there will be permanent loss of function."

Kort nodded, blank. 

"In the meantime," Ducky continued, "I would like to point out that this was entirely preventable."

Gibbs rubbed a hand over his head and sighed.

The doctor ignored him. "A fistfight is not an acceptable way to 'work off steam.' An altercation involving a knife even less so. Particularly when you both know perfectly well what this boy is capable of."

Ducky sat there and looked at them like he was expecting an answer.

"I'm not sure what the alternative would have been, Doctor Mallard."

"To address a problem?" Ducky's cultured voice was acid, and the eyes he turned on Kort were clear and cold. "Conversation is the usual method."

Gibbs leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. "He was determined to fight, Duck."

"With his friends," Ducky pointed out. "Self-destructive behavior that should have been stopped at once, not allowed to continue."

Gibbs scoffed.

Ziva studied his set face, the harsh lines carving shadows around his mouth. She realized the anger there was not for Ducky. It was fueled by uncertainty, and aimed at Gibbs himself.

"He was angry, armed," Kort muttered. He squinted down the hall, eyes tracking the odd passerby. "Gray wasn't just going to come in for tea."

"And yet you knew he had to come in, one way or another. I am not saying that avoiding a fight would have been easy. Given an angry young man it may well have been the more difficult path. But then they say the things worth doing generally are. Continue to deal with him through force or violence - "

"Hey," Gibbs protested. "It was one time - "

"It should not have been any time! Don't you think he's had enough of it? Not to mention he is entirely too practiced. He could have killed either one of you." Ducky huffed at their listless shrugs. "Or a third party. He could have been killed, or even more seriously injured. There are better ways to resolve one's difficulties. He is searching for them. He needs them. It would be well on your parts to model some alternative behavior."

The sharp words were met by silence. Ducky rolled his eyes. "You're clever boys. I'm sure you'll figure it out."

He got up and marched off, looking for someone with a needle and a need to practice to sew up Kort.

Gibbs watched him go. "I think that was our scolding for fighting in the bullpen," he said absently.

"And in the parking lot," Ziva reminded him.

Gibbs' eyes landed on her, and narrowed. "Call McGee and Dinozzo with updates. Get some shuteye. I want all of you in the office in eight hours, matching photos to locations in Hanlan's notes. Go."

She slid elegantly to her feet and walked away, pulling out her phone as she disappeared around a corner. It did not escape Gibbs' notice that Kort tracked her every move.

The silence felt awkward, like a heavy load, until Kort broke it.

"Ordering them around is a perk, I suppose," he said. "But I'm not convinced the hassle of working with a team of green agents is worth it." He relaxed into the leather armchair, lazy and arrogant. "Though in David's case there may be a few obvious advantages to close collaboration."

Oh, funny. Gibbs worked his jaw and searched for the coffee he was sure he'd set at his feet. "You think Ziva is green. What's the matter - exam not thorough enough?"

"Hm, not sure. Perhaps she needs practice."

Gibbs closed his eyes and shook his head. If he got into a fight in a hospital waiting room Ducky would kick his ass. He forced himself to focus on the job instead. He'd faced the worst that violence could do to people, and in the end it was the routine of the job that got him through it. First was resolving the immediate danger. That was done for the night, though as Ducky pointed out it was a Grade A fuck up all around. The one they were trying to protect was the one who got hurt.

After the fight was over you asked the questions. Had the conversation, like Ducky said. Gibbs was pretty good at the imminent danger part, for obvious reasons. But he was good at this part too. He'd always been an efficient interrogator. Though there were times when he knew in his gut he didn't want the answers that were coming.

Kort was silent, waiting stonily for the next move. He watched Gibbs knowingly, like he was miles ahead, just waiting for Gibbs to catch up. Maybe he was.

"What he said about his mother, about her being with Londono by choice. That true?"

"Yes."

Gibbs had already known that, really, after what Gray hurled at Kort. Still it felt like cement in his gut. "How do you know?"

"I spoke to her," Kort said, flat. "Years ago, when I found her. I offered to take her to Gray. She had no interest in leaving Londono."

Gibbs tried to puzzle it through. He couldn't. "You didn't tell him. So how does Gray all of a sudden know you lied about her?" He studied the other man's face, the messy silver stubble and the distant pale eyes, still scanning the lobby methodically.

Kort took a moment to respond. "I worked the cartel for years. I've managed to get Londono under surveillance from time to time, and Gray knows it. The other day, O'Donnell told him that his mother was with Londono before she was killed."

Gibbs frowned skeptically.

"Not a big leap, for him," Kort went on. "My surveillance is thorough. And Gray knows Londono would be able to offer her a much easier life." Kort picked up the bottle of water Ziva had placed beside him and tipped it back and forth, watching it level in his hands. "As long as she was willing to give Gray up."

"And you're sure she was willing," Gibbs probed again.

Kort was still, though his knee hurt like hell and he wanted more pills. The last ones had worn off. "Define willing. The cartel operated on fear and her options were limited."

Gibbs waited for more.

"She'd heard the rumors about him," Kort said finally. "A gray-eyed boy with the cartel . . . with O'Donnell, no less." He shrugged, shoulders stiff. "She was afraid of what she'd heard. Meanwhile Londono was cleaning up his act, becoming a respectable businessman. He knew she was related to the Caleras, that she could legitimize his claim to that land. She knew he would protect her as long as she cooperated. And he was sincere about helping her to find their missing son. The innocent son."

Kort raised his eyes and cocked an eyebrow at Gibbs' intense stare.

"You telling me she didn't know that Sean was with Gray?"

"Few did." Kort spoke slowly. But willingly enough. "After Conlon was killed there was chaos in the camps. I'd arranged an alibi hundreds of miles away and encouraged some dissension in the ranks. So there was suspicion of betrayal from within as well as concern about rival cartels and CIA involvement. Conlon's men ran wild, torching homes, separating families to question them – particularly any who might have had access to Conlon."

"And Gray was one of those?"

Kort nodded. "Gray was taken and interrogated. His mother hid Sean with friends and tried to secure transport out of the region. Months later Gray managed to find Sean, but only with O'Donnell's assistance. He couldn't find his mother at all. It was years before I was able to locate her. By then she was under Londono's influence and believed the stories circulating about Gray." Kort paused. "I doubt she considered him capable of caring for a brother."

Gibbs took a breath. "Gray knows you killed his father?"

"Yes."

"These rumors about Gray. What kind of stories are we talking about?"

Kort paused, reluctant.

"Just tell me," Gibbs said tiredly.

"Gray and the others were a blunt instrument. Most often used for enforcement," Kort said.

"Hits."

"Yes. Against anyone who was seen as a threat to the cartel's expansion." Kort met his eyes and waited for Gibbs' nod, indicating he understood.

"They were useful for gathering intelligence as well," Kort went on. "For keeping people in line. The more gruesome their techniques the more effective, in the cartel's eyes. It was well known that Gray had O'Donnell's interest, that he was often with him," Kort made a small motion with his fingers, "keeping him happy. You know O'Donnell's reputation."

Kort tipped the water bottle back and forth, staring at the predictable flow, the sensible play of mass and gravity in his hands. "The population was terrified of both of them, but most in the cartel considered Gray and his crew too young to be anything but loyal - easily manipulated, without connections or outside support." Kort smiled, grim and amused. "Unsophisticated."

Gibbs leaned in to watch the smirk playing around Kort's mouth. He had some idea of what connected Kort to Gray, now - the partnership that had set everything else in motion. But he'd never been given the first clue as to how the connection had come to be in the first place.

"What?" he pressed.

Kort shook his head. "Doesn't matter."

Fuck that. "Then it doesn't matter if you tell me."

Kort was beyond caring. "Fine. You're aware Gray was born in the United States?"

Gibbs nodded.

"I'm not quite sure what compelled his mother to return to Calera land with Gray. But she would have found the cartel more organized and dangerous than it was when she'd fled Conlon years before, and she was trapped. She finally appealed to the upper management in hopes of finding a way out, but Londono knew who she was and wasn't about to let her go. After he impregnated her with Sean – "

"Was that consensual?"

Kort tilted his head. "Define consensual. Londono isn't the sort of man one says no to. Neither was Conlon. I don't imagine she tried it with either one of them."

Gibbs waved a hand to get him to go on.

"She didn't tell Londono she was carrying his child. She knew it could trap her there forever. After Sean was born she tucked him away and went to Conlon with Gray, hoping a boy who was so obviously his son would inspire him to help them. That backfired, as you can imagine. She was a beautiful woman. Conlon enjoyed her company," Kort said flatly. "When the Agency finally decided Conlon was too powerful, I set up my alibi and dropped into his house unannounced. I was known, trusted as an arms dealer they dealt with frequently. I killed six of his guards, killed him, and torched the house. I didn't think anyone else was there."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

"As it turns out," Kort smiled faintly, "Gray was there. I never saw him on that day. But he knew who I was. I'd made a point to get to know everyone in the area, including the children, with my supervisor's encouragement," he added drily, "as you know. Within months of Conlon's death I was withdrawn to work La Grenouille, but I kept up my contacts in Colombia. Years later I was approached by an American Ranger with an old photograph."

Kort hesitated.

"And?"

"It was a picture of me and a woman I'd had an affair with. She was useful in gaining entry into Conlon's circle," Kort shrugged. "Gray wanted out, and protection as well. He couldn't get out of the country without the CIA's help and decided it was time to call in his . . . favors."

"Favors."

"I used protection," Kort said tightly. "But the photograph was accompanied by a DNA sample."

"Bee," Gibbs guessed.

Kort shrugged. "She must have wanted a child. I never saw the woman after I took out Conlon – I didn't know."

Gibbs scratched the stubble on his jaw. "Where's the mother now?"

"Dead," Kort said tonelessly. "She liked to date what she considered to be powerful men. Years after I'd moved on to Grenouille she was collateral damage in a hit against one of them. Gray was influential enough at that point to pay a family he trusted to look after Sean. He hid Bee with him."

Gibbs thought back to his basement and grinned a little. "Seems like they get along."

"They refuse to be separated," Kort said seriously. "Under any circumstances."

Gibbs laughed.

"It's worked out well for Gray," Kort agreed quietly.

Gibbs shook his head. "So Gray took care of your child and didn't give you up when he was interrogated. Pretty good for a kid you didn't even know."

Too good.

A shrug. "I knew him, somewhat," Kort admitted. "Gray was observant and tolerated within Conlon's camp. I thought he could be a useful source and cultivated him accordingly. After Conlon was killed, Gray came to O'Donnell's attention. Never a good thing. I did what I could to help him survive, before I was withdrawn." Kort paused to twist the cap off of the water bottle and swallowed half of it down. "Anyway, I think Gray knew even then that he would be able to use everything he had on me eventually. He's always understood the value of information."

Yeah. Wherever would he have picked that up.

Gibbs eyed the man next to him and finally sat back in his seat, considering the elegantly paneled ceiling, the soft lighting. "You didn't tell Gray that you knew where his mother was because you didn't want him to find out she'd sided with Londono."

Dawn was beginning to seep in through the windows, blanketing one side of the lobby in deep pink light. Traffic in and out was picking up. Kort rubbed the least damaged side of his face and eyed Gibbs' coffee. "Yes. Obviously."

"And Gray was pissed enough to retaliate by moving his brother and your daughter out of your sphere of influence." Gibbs weighed that. Gray had clearly pinned his hope for the future on finding his mother, reuniting his family.

But Kort had known for a long time now that there would be no happy reunion. Gibbs decided he was a little surprised that Kort was still alive.

"She isn't . . . " Kort paused at Gibbs' flat stare. "I hardly know her."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

"Anyway, it wasn't to retaliate," Kort sighed. "Or about my influence. I have no influence over any of them on the best of days. Gray moved them because there were bodies piling up and he wanted to keep Sean away from any potential danger." Kort opened the water and sipped it slowly. "The fact that the move would drive me out of my mind was a bonus, nothing more."

"She why you've done all this, Trent?"

How the hell did Gibbs even know about her? It didn't seem likely that Gray told him outright – Gray horded intel like gold. But somehow the man had figured it out. "She's not on the table," Kort said coldly. "And I've just told you I hardly know her."

Gibbs shook his head. That wasn't a no. He looked down at his hands, covered in thin red scratches from his struggle with Gray. "You've been lying to him for years. And all this time you told me to be upfront with him."

"Yes," Kort said smoothly. "Well, as he said earlier – honesty is the one thing he's ever really asked of me." A slight pause. "But that wasn't to be. If he's going to get it from anyone it might as well be his white knight."

Gibbs looked at him angrily. Tired of the bullshit, and whatever twisted sarcasm was behind it. Except Kort seemed too exhausted to be anything but matter of fact. He wasn't even looking at Gibbs.

His white knight. Dinozzo and Kort both had this hang-up. The insistence on impossible heroes, even though the two of them should know better. Gibbs certainly didn't play white knights anymore. Two decades ago he'd picked up his rifle and set out to win an unwinnable game. The field and all of its players had been dark for a very long time.

A fresh-faced young woman in a white doctor's coat was heading determinedly toward them, Ducky looking on imperiously from the end of the hall. Kort rolled his eyes and stood up.

Gibbs stayed where he was. "You were right, you know," he said. "Not to tell him."

Kort grinned. "I didn't do it to be noble, Gibbs. His tender feelings aren't my concern."

"Just protecting your asset?" Gibbs studied the man standing over him. "You think he would have sent Sean to live with his mother if he'd known, don't you."

Kort shrugged. "At least one of them could have been raised by his parents. In the lap of luxury no less, protected by an army of guards rather than hunted by it."

Gibbs shook his head. "Sean wants to be with his brother."

"They don't know what they want," Kort dismissed. "An eight-year-old thinks he wants to be with his brother. He doesn't understand the cost. I'd wager he didn't want to get shot at in Colombia. Or cower in your basement, chased halfway around the world by a psychopath." He waved a hand almost violently, irritation finally creeping from his voice into his movements. "Children don't know what they want."

Gibbs leaned back in the plush seat, looking Kort over curiously. The night Dinozzo raged at him, when they were just back from Colombia, ran through his mind. It was Gibbs' willingness to walk away that really set Tony off. Dinozzo could forgive Gibbs for not being entirely honest, could forgive his many mistakes. Giving up was the one line that could not be crossed. 

And when Declan O'Donnell first tore into their lives Dinozzo had sought Gibbs out again and insisted that he couldn't walk away from Gray. You just have to be there, Tony'd said. You just have to listen.

"Actually, a lot of the time kids know exactly what they want," Gibbs said mildly. "We're the ones who make it complicated."

The doctor was standing in the lobby now, glancing impatiently between them. "Mr. Kort?"

Kort nodded at Gibbs' battered hands. "Gray said he wanted you to let him go," he said. "But you were right to hold on to him. And despite what Dr. Mallard may think you were right to let him fight. He needs to fight. He's like us, Gibbs." Kort looked at him frankly. No sleaze, no CIA cool, just a tired man. "It's what he is. What's left." He tossed something onto the seat next to Gibbs and turned away.

Gray's knife.

Ironically, it should have satisfied him. Never go anywhere without a knife. A rule geared toward self-reliance. Independence.

But it wasn't the only thing his people carried. It wasn't the most important.

"No." Gibbs seized Kort's arm. "They took a lot from him, Kort. But that's not all that's left."

There had been a time when Gibbs was nothing but fight, and utterly independent. For a long time he'd allowed all the rest to fade, and be washed away. But that wasn't who he was anymore. His team wouldn't allow it. They'd pulled him back from the edge in Colombia, and used Gray to do it.

In Colombia he'd wondered if his agents had thrown away what made them who they were. If they'd obliterated the fine steel line that separated them from what they battled every day. Same as Gibbs had done so long ago. They had thrown something away, to get him back. It was a bargain they might not have made if they'd known what it meant going in. But it was done. And now they were different, maybe less, maybe more than they'd been. 

He glanced at the knife, and looked into Kort's eyes. Felt the faint sting in his battered hands, and welcomed it.

**x**

Gibbs let Gray sleep for hours. When the local wore off and Gray woke up, Gibbs fed him, dumped him in the shower with a bag over his arm, and finally had him discharged. He escorted him to the agency car Dinozzo left for them, intent on hauling him home for more rest.

In the hospital Gray did what he was told. No arguments. No disappearing act. Gibbs didn't want to jinx it by trying to figure out why. As it turned out, Gray told him why as soon as they were in the car. Gibbs hadn't even started the engine.

"This car secure enough? Or do you need a locked down room at Langely?"

Right. Gibbs turned to face him. "No. Car's fine." These days every vehicle his team used was swept regularly for bugs.

He took a moment to gather his thoughts. "We knew a few things about O'Donnell's movements here from your conversation with him. We knew that he'd spent significant time in an isolated location with the federal agents he killed. It took a couple of days but we found that location. House not far from an airfield in North Carolina."

"You found the rest of their bodies?"

"Yeah."

"My mother one of them?"

"No. We didn't find any evidence to contradict what he said about her death – that she was shot and killed in Colombia."

Gray nodded, expressionless. A go on.

"We tracked him from the airfield in South Carolina to Bolivia. He had a safe house there. We had a team observe him to get visual confirmation. They placed a bomb in his car. He was killed instantly by the blast and the car and his body were burned beyond recognition. Officially O'Donnell's gone into hiding. As far as the cartel knows he's still alive."

"You see it?"

"No."

"You got this from a team in Bolivia?" Gray looked out his window, at the dreary concrete pillars of the parking complex. "O'Donnell threatened them, or bought them off. He's not dead."

"Team's based in Brazil, actually." Gibbs smiled grimly. "And they're our people. He's dead, Gray."

"You don't know that. You don't have his body. You can buy anything down there – buy anyone. You paid them and he paid them, and now they're happy and he's alive."

Gibbs flexed his hands, shifting irritably in his seat. "That how it was for you? You went to the highest bidder?"

Gray didn't flinch. Didn't seem to care. "Yeah. That's how it was for me."

No. It wasn't – Gibbs knew that. But he wasn't sure Gray saw the difference. "I don't think so. Some people aren't for sale."

"You think you know me. And you think he's dead. But you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Good luck with your little crusade." He leaned forward and reached for the door handle. "You're gonna need it."

Gibbs locked the doors. "You did what you did in Colombia for your family. Same as we got O'Donnell for you. For our family. He's dead, Gray."

"I'm not your family."

"Tell that to Dinozzo and Ziva," Gibbs said, mostly serious. "They didn't care what I had to say about it. I doubt they're going to listen to you."

"Let me out of this fucking car."

"Maybe O'Donnell was able to buy off a lot of people," Gibbs continued mildly. "Or threaten them into giving him what he wanted. But not my team. And not these guys." He looked away, considering options. "You want to talk to them?"

Gray turned to face him. "Talk to who?"

"The team that took out O'Donnell. They're here in DC now. You want to see them?"

"Yeah. I want to see them." He said it like he didn't believe Gibbs could follow through. Like he'd just been asked if he wanted to go to the moon.

Gibbs grinned and started up the car. "Put on your seatbelt."

He called ahead ten minutes before they arrived. Pete met them in the lobby of the condo complex. "Gray!"

The kid gaped at him and Gibbs laughed out loud.

Pete gave Gray a cautious fist bump and stepped back to take in the damage. "Wish I could say you're looking good. What happened?" His eyes settled on the fresh cast on Gray's hand. "I heard you got shot," he said. And added pointedly, "In the leg."

Gray's eyes darted around, up to the balcony running around the atrium, at the hallways leading off the main lobby. He stepped closer to Gibbs, like he felt safer, when he was closer to him. Gibbs almost startled.

"What is this place?" Gray asked.

"No worries. Just got in a couple days ago, but as far as we can tell this is where Senators come to have affairs. We're locked up tighter than the Pentagon." Pete gestured to the elevator along the far wall. "Let's go up – Rodge'll throw a fit if I hog you down here."

In the elevator Pete chattered about the take-out Brazilian grill down the street. In the hallway he told them about the all-night diner on the corner that delivered whole peach pies.

Finally he ushered them into a light-filled apartment. Rodge sat in the dining room at a gigantic table, sorting through a thousand photographs. 

"Rodge." Gray grinned faintly. "Fuck me. It's really you."

The entirely enormous man got up and bound toward them, looking happy until he took in the cast and the bruised face. He stopped short, and after a few seconds consideration, patted Gray gingerly on the shoulder. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing."

The man raised his eyebrows and threw a very brief, very menacing look at Gibbs.

"Drop it," Gray said.

Silence. And then –

"Yeah. Fine," Rodge said grudgingly. "I'm dropping it. So what are you doing here? C'mon in, find a seat that isn't covered in crap. Want something to drink? You want juice? We got guava. And uh . . . mango. And we've got about ten pounds leftover churrasco. You hungry? This stuff is delicious, you should have some." Rodge opened the fridge with a flourish.

"Yeah – juice. Thanks."

Gibbs suppressed a grin. Gray couldn't take his eyes off the men in front of him, or the piles of work around them. He was so taken aback he was being polite.

Rodge steered Gray to a seat at the table and set a glass in front of him, pointedly ignoring Gibbs. Pete silently set Gibbs up with a cup of coffee and sat down along with Rodge across from Gray.

Rodge grinned and slapped his hands down in front of him, making the table shake. "Well what's up, man? If you're here to tell us you're going back to Colombia to rescue some sorry old fart from his well-deserved kidnapping then I'm taking you as my hostage right now. And not to go hiking in Colombia. I haven't been on vacation in weeks, you believe that? I'm picturing Disney World, Space Mountain, VIP passes. What do you say?"

Gray turned to Gibbs. "Can we talk here?"

Gibbs nodded.

"Gibbs thinks Diablo's dead," Gray said flatly.

"Yeah," Rodge said easily. "That news is several days old. Where've you been?"

Instead of relaxing Gray seemed to get more tense. "How do you know you got him?"

The men exchanged glances and Gibbs nodded. Pete got up and walked out of the room, returning a few seconds later with a cardboard box full of documents. He took out a thin folder and walked around the table to sit next to Gray, flipping through the pages.

"This was taken about an hour before the hit," Pete said, and placed a photo in front of Gray. O'Donnell and two other men were walking toward a black sedan.

Pete took out a second photo, this one showing them getting into the car, O'Donnell in the back left. "We had a locator on the car at this point. The vehicle didn't stop between the time it picked up O'Donnell, in this photo, and the time it was destroyed. Good indication he was still in the car."

A third photo, the same car moving along a rough road. "This is almost an hour later, less than a minute before detonation." Same plates. O'Donnell still in the back left. The same expensive looking blue shirt and sunglasses just visible through the slightly open window.

"Best glass money can buy and he rode around with the windows open," Rodge said. "He really was nuts."

"He opened the window very briefly," Pete said. "Our photographer was able to get a shot at that point. This is less than a minute after detonation." Pete slid the next photo toward Gray. The twisted frame of the car was just visible through an inferno of flame. It had been blown clean off the road into the brush. "Our team was first on scene."

"We were the only ones on scene," Rodge said. "We got him on the way to his place. Nothing around for miles. Your uh – " he waved a hand in Gibbs' direction without looking at him. "The intel was good."

"We put out the fire and hauled the car to a ravine close by to destroy it. This is the interior prior to clean up, about fifteen minutes after the initial explosion." Pete handed photos of the blackened shell and its three burnt corpses to Gray.

Gray picked up the one that showed the body in the back left, and then returned to the first photo, placing the before and after side by side.

"These are close-ups of O'Donnell," Pete said, and slid three more dark photos toward Gray.

Gray spread them out and went between them for several minutes. Pete reached for the magnifying glass sitting at the end of the table and placed it next to him.

"Who took these?"

"I did," Rodge said.

Gray kept going back to one photo. A body shot, after the explosion. He picked up the magnifying glass and stared at the image. "This is his watch," he said finally.

"It looks like the one he's wearing before he gets in," Pete agreed.

"No." Gray's hand was shaking very slightly, tremor only noticeable from the movement of the photograph he held. "This is it."

He put down the photo, picked it up again to look at it, shoved it away. "He had the band custom made. He likes real fancy metalwork." Gray sat there in silence for a few seconds, eyes worlds away, the three men watching him. "He always got stuff custom. He wanted everything to be original. Had a lot of weird watches – that's a snake, face of the watch in its teeth. He had that made in Mexico, one time."

Kid was so quiet, most of the time. But Gibbs had the impression he'd only been able to stop, at the end of that, because he'd run out of breath.

Pete picked up the photo and peered at the blackened wrist. "Doesn't look like a normal band. Could be a serpent." He set the photo back down. "Could be debris."

Gray stacked the photos and handed them back to Pete. "That's his watch."

"You would know," Pete said agreeably.

"Yeah."

They were quiet for a minute, Gray still staring at the pile of photos.  "Thanks," he said finally.

"You're welcome," Pete said.

"How did – can I ask?" Gray glanced at Gibbs.

"Ask whatever you want."

"He was paranoid," Gray said. "His routes were cleared. Cars were secured, always. That," his eyes flicked to the photos, "that shouldn't have been possible."

"He was traveling lighter than usual, trying to be inconspicuous. We were doing the same, moving a little faster than we normally would. Our intel was good, we were lucky there. Your friends here in DC wanted us to go in hot." Rodge shrugged. "Things went our way."

Gibbs' eyebrows went up and Pete's gaze flicked to his, amused. He knew what Gibbs was thinking. No one who didn't really know Rodge ever expected modesty.

Gray looked like he was trying to relax in the chair and couldn't get his spine to unbend. "Thanks," he said again.

"He killed federal agents," Gibbs pointed out, "targeted their families, killed American allies overseas. Taking care of dirtbags like Declan O'Donnell is our job. If we'd done it right he would have been dead before you were born. We're the ones who should be thanking you, for your help. The information you got from him helped us track him down."

"Here here," Pete grinned, and tipped his cup of coffee toward Gray.

Gray looked away quickly. He turned to Rodge, who'd ignored the whole exchange.

"So what are you working on now?"

"This guy." Rodge held up a photograph of a slight, silver-haired man. "Know him?"

"No." Gray frowned at the picture. "Who is that?"

"Cop says he's a runner out of Camp Two, all the way to Europe. Pretty high up."

"Yeah, she would know. Camp Two." Gray stared at the photo like it was a movie.

"We should get going," Gibbs said. "Gray hasn't actually been to bed yet."

Pete looked at his watch and frowned. It was the middle of the afternoon.

"I slept at the hospital," Gray muttered.

"Hm." Rodge propped his chin in his hand like that was fascinating.

"It's a drive back to my place," Gibbs said. "You want to hit the head here?"

"Yeah." Gray got up and glanced between them, moving toward the hallway Pete pointed out. "Don't incapacitate my ride, Rodge."

"Ooh, big word."

"Don't do it."

Rodge held up his hands innocently.

They waited until the door at the end of the hall closed.

"He looks like someone much bigger than him and much smaller than me beat the shit out of him." Rodge looked Gibbs over with a decidedly feral gleam. Gibbs hadn't noticed quite how large Rodge was the last time they met.

"Someone your size, maybe," Rodge added.

"Guess he was. But not by anyone who actually wanted to beat him up. Not this time."

"You?"

"No." Gibbs weighed the advantages of fessing up. With Rodge staring at him they seemed pretty clear. "Kort."

"Shorty?" Rodge either didn't believe him or tipped immediately toward giving Kort the benefit of the doubt. "Why?"

"Gray insisted on it. Believe me, _Shorty_ got the short end of that stick."

"What about his hand? That's not from a fight."

Now he felt like a bad parent. Ducky was right, they should have stopped it. Though how they were supposed to stop a berserker Gray without causing any additional injuries – hell, fatalities – he didn't know.

"He hit a car."

Rodge frowned. "A car accident?"

"No. He punched a car."

The man looked at him almost in wonder. "He lost his temper?"

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "He's having a bad week."

"I didn't know it was possible for him to lose his temper." Rodge considered it. "I don't think I knew he had a temper."

"Yeah. Well. He does."

"Everyone has a temper, you idiot," Pete said calmly. Like he'd never actually experienced the thing himself. "It's probably healthy that he's expressing it, now that he can. Though hitting a car has its drawbacks." He rearranged a few photos in the stack in front of him and tucked them away again. "Hopefully he'll figure out that there are better ways to vent."

When he finished rearranging his file Pete leveled Gibbs with an odd look. Gibbs couldn't interpret it. "The temper I believe, no problem," Pete said finally. "The way he trusts you – that one I didn't think was possible."

Gibbs couldn't respond.

"Look after him," Pete added, and picked up the box to return it to its room.

"Huh." Rodge glanced at the closed hallway door, at Pete's retreating figure, and back to Gibbs. "So. You want some juice, Gibbs?"

Gibbs' eyes landed on the florescent yellow dregs at the bottom of Gray's glass. "No. Thanks."


	34. Something You Needed?

_a/n: This chapter begins about eight hours before the last chapter ended._  

* * *

 Ziva found Tony and McGee in the hospital's plush cafeteria. They were sitting in a candlelit booth next to a window overlooking the city, ogling the pretty waitress placing a drink covered in whipped cream in front of McGee.

Ziva asked for tea and Tony ordered another hazelnut macchiato, staring at the waitress's behind as she walked away.

"Why don't we come here when we get hurt?" His voice could only be described as appreciative. "Did you know this menu is available to the patients? Did you see the wine list?" He looked at Ziva plaintively and held up a leather bound menu.

"We don't come here because we're government employees, Tony, on the taxpayer's dime." McGee set about the complicated task of mixing the little tower of cream into his coffee. "We're wards of the state, not heirs to cartel fortunes."

"Kort arranged this!" Tony protested. "Last time I checked, the CIA was a government agency." His voice should have been louder, Ziva thought, but thick carpeting and the drapes framing the window behind him softened it.

They paused as the waitress returned with a gleaming black tea service.

"We are to return to the office by 1400," Ziva said. "Gibbs wants us to resume identifying locations and targets that Hanlan has described." McGee looked at his watch and groaned. The sun was just coming up, throwing the bags under his eyes into stark relief.

Ziva relayed what Ducky said about Gray's prospects for full recovery, that they would have to wait and see, really. When she fell silent Tony watched her check the teapot, still steeping, and put a slice of lemon in her cup. Ziva could feel his eyes on her.

She used to disguise what she was thinking no matter who was watching her. But she didn't usually bother with the team anymore. She wasn't entirely sure it would be effective—they knew her too well. And she had no desire to mislead them anyway. Gibbs had shown her, and Tony, how to really be part of a team. It was territory won inch by slow inch, and she prized it all the more for how hard she fought for it.

McGee was watching her now, too.

"What else?" Tony prompted.

Ziva checked the teapot again and poured. She would need the caffeine just to get home. "I am not sure. But Gibbs - he seems . . . "

McGee tensed and ducked his chin so that he could stare at her more directly. "Gibbs seems what?"

Ziva glanced around out of habit. Gibbs was still in the building, after all.

"Well . . . worried?" she said finally.

McGee stared at her, unblinking like a fish. "Worried."

He sounded the word out as if uncertain of the meaning. Perhaps he was, in the context of Gibbs.

Ziva turned the teacup in its saucer impatiently. "That is not the right word. Uneasy. Or uncertain – "

Tony had watched the strain settle into Gibbs over the last few weeks. It wasn't in his expression or his voice. Those were the same as they always were. You could see it in the way he moved - swift and hard, and with more force than was necessary. It gave him an air of violence that wasn't normal. But he'd seen Gibbs like that before, in the few cases that came close to being as big and potentially bad as this one. The man was stoic, not a robot.

"We're kind of in the middle of a hairy operation, Ziva," he said. "Everyone's on edge."

"No." She shook her head. "This is more than that. Ducky scolded Kort and Gibbs like a pair of schoolboys, and in the end the two of them seemed to be schoolboys. Gibbs looked unsure of himself. And Kort," she tucked a stray curl behind her ear, "I think that Kort is off the trails."

"Off the rails," Tony said.

"Well that's true." McGee stirred his coffee emphatically. "He's obsessed. He put in more hours last week than Gibbs."

Tony glanced between the two of them and scratched the back of his head. "He'll be fine," he said dismissively. "He's Gibbs."

The reason Gibbs didn't do worried was simple. What a leader showed his team would pick up, like sponges hungry for direction. Gibbs was the best leader Tony had ever known, and the man built up his own legend for a reason. Tony was pretty sure that 99% of that reason was sitting at this table with him, considering his words.

They had to believe in Gibbs, the unshakable confidence that was Gibbs.

"Yes," Ziva said slowly, "I know. I just . . ."

McGee nodded. "It's this case. It's hitting him hard." He picked up his empty coffee cup and sipped, looking down with bleary betrayal when all he got was air. "Gibbs does the job because Gibbs takes care of people. But these kids are tough cause the job isn't what they need, really. So he can't take care of them the usual way. It's like . . . " he waved the cup and looked around for the waitress. "The job isn't enough this time. Not the way it's supposed to be, for Gibbs."

Tony let his eyes drift to Ziva. She did the eyebrow tilt, quirking her lips back at him. It was true, what Gibbs said that night in his kitchen. When O'Donnell was lurking in DC, taunting them. Gibbs reminded them then that McGee was good at more than computers. Tim was good at family, too.

"C'mon, McGoo." Tony stood up and wrested the oversized mug from Tim's hand. "No more caffeine. Time to go home."

**x**

That afternoon Tony strode into the bullpen feeling nothing less than triumphant. He'd slept, showered, and redressed, and still had thirty seconds to spare on Gibbs' deadline.

"Where's the boss?"

McGee stood and walked toward Tony's desk, a fifteen-inch stack of photographs in his hands.

"Whoa, Probie, where are you going with - "

The crash of the stack onto his desk cut him off. 

"Casino in Caracas. Money laundering," Tim grunted. "You're it."

Tony eyed the pile. It wasn't even thick paper.

"What happened to our Feebie friends?"

Since Dargas and one of his subordinates' heads had turned up at the Navy Yard, agents attached to Fornell's FBI unit had been "assisting" NCIS with their "investigation." Tony had Gibbs' blessing to "delegate" work to them.

"Third precinct pulled in five members of the Vatos Locos last night on drug charges," McGee said. "Fornell wanted the agents assigned to the Navy Yard to check them out for a Calera connection."

No help from the Feebies then.

"And where is the boss?"

"I believe he was going to stay at the hospital until Gray woke and was discharged." Ziva's voice was preoccupied, and pretty much disembodied. She was at her desk, hidden behind stacks of Colombian prison files. Two of the targets they'd identified so far were incarcerated at a massive federal prison in Medellín. That could prove inconvenient, eventually.

But at least they knew where those two were.

Tony frowned as he dropped into his chair. It was just after two in the afternoon on a weekday. Unless Gibbs had lost his memory and run away to Mexico, or been arrested and hauled down to Mexico, he was always at work in the middle of the day. Early in the day and late in the day too, for that matter.

He checked his watch again, and decided to give it an hour.

**x**

Half a block from Gibbs' place the car rolled to a stop behind a school bus dropping kids at the corner. It was a beautiful afternoon, yellow sun slanting through dark February trees, painting the whole neighborhood in gold and amber. The kids tumbling from the bus wore bright hats and laughed as they shoved each other across the street.

From inside the car it looked happy and idyllic, children moving across the windshield like pixals on a screen. Pictures from some other life, in another world.

Gibbs waited for the bus to turn and accelerated down his block. When he pulled into the driveway and cut the engine he sat there for a long moment, head back against the seat, and let the stillness wash over him. He'd been tired when he left his desk last night. Intent on getting home, to the peace and the darkness, and collapsing into sleep. Last night felt like a lifetime ago.

When Gibbs glanced over to the boy sitting across from him Gray was looking right at him.

Gibbs hadn't actually asked if coming back to his house was alright.

"Have dinner plans, Gray?"

Gray shook his head.

"You need to get in touch with anybody?"

Another silent no. There was some curiosity in his eyes, though.

Gibbs smiled to himself. He was getting better at reading him.

"Sure? You can use my cell."

Gray didn't respond to that at all. He just looked at Gibbs.

Gibbs let a little of the smile come out, because two could play at this game - two _were_ playing the game - and Gray was getting better at reading him, too. Gibbs reached into the backseat to grab the thin jacket Gray was wearing before the nurses peeled it off him.

"Found a debit card in the front pocket and eight hundred in cash in the sleeve." Gray would know they'd searched it anyway. His clothes had been picked through, washed, dried and folded within an hour of check-in. "Didn't find a phone anywhere."

Gray reached for the jacket with his cast, shoulder for his good hand still too sore to move. Gibbs leaned forward and gently folded it over his forearm, speaking off-handedly as he pulled back. "Tuesday's two for one pizzas here at Casa Gibbs."

Still Gray said nothing, but he didn't need to. The question was clear in his eyes.

Gibbs tilted his head toward his house. "There are a few things we could go over. And Dinozzo says the pizza's not half bad."

Gray glanced at the house. "Dinozzo here?"

The voice was unreadable. Gibbs ran the tone through his mind again and studied Gray's face, but there was no indication one way or the other.

"No. He can come over, if you want."

Gray shook his head and got out of the car.

**x**

It was never until Gibbs wasn't there that you realized how busy Gibbs really was.

An hour hadn't even passed and his line was ringing for the fiftieth time. Abby dropped a load of classified prison schematics on Ziva's desk and swiveled to pick it up.

"Bossman's phone!"

The agents grinned from behind their piles.

" . . . Clearly I'm someone who works with the bossman. And you are?"

She listened intently, then pulled the phone away from her ear and tossed it back onto its cradle. "Hung up on me. Gotta go!"

Tony glanced at McGee. Tim was watching Abby's departure wistfully.

"Now that is what I call efficiency, McSmitten. We should get all of Gibbs' calls redirected to the lab."

McGee sighed in agreement.

Abby hadn't even skipped out of sight before Ziva's cell started to ring.

"Agent David. . . . Cassie! Hello . . . Oh, yes, that was our co-worker . . . Yes certainly, I will be right down."

"Cassie is waiting at the back entrance," Ziva announced, and stood. "Apparently Gibbs has been letting them in through the evidence garage so that they will not appear in our security logs."

Tony shoved back from his desk, eager for a break. Looking at security footage of a casino's dodgy customers wasn't nearly as much fun as going to a casino, no matter how hot the cartel wives were.

He dug vending machine change out of his junk drawer. "I'll open up the lounge."

Ziva nodded, heading for the elevator, and Tony went to Gibbs' desk to get the keys. Cassie and Tomas, along with all of their most sensitive intel on the cartel, had been set up in an out of the way third floor conference room, sealed with an electronic superkey that McGee had cooked up.

Tony removed Gibbs' desk keys from their hiding spot and opened the secure drawer where Gibbs kept his lockbox. He entered the seven digit pin and lifted the lid on the box where he'd seen Gibbs put the key, every day, for the past week.

It wasn't there.

"McGee." Tony stared into the box. "You been upstairs today?"

"No." McGee looked up from his truckload of financials. "Why – ? Oh. Uh oh." He stood, sending a cascade of paper to the floor.

Tony grabbed his sidearm from his desk and headed for the stairwell.

The door was closed when they got up there. Tony tested the handle gently.

It moved smoothly under his fingers, unlocked.

On three, he mouthed to McGee. One, two . . . Tony flung the door open and stepped through, Sig raised.

Kort looked up slowly, no expression at all on his face. "Something you needed, Dinozzo?"

Tony lowered his gun reluctantly. "How the hell did you get in here?"

Kort's attention returned to his computers, three laptops spread on the table in front of him. "I used the key."

Tony glanced around the room. It looked pretty much the same as the last time he'd come up. A few more photographs taped to the walls, documents from the boxes stacked against the walls were strewn around the table.

"Cassie and Tomas are on their way up," Tony said.

Kort nodded absently.

Tony gestured at the door. "You should keep this locked."

Kort raised an eyebrow, focus unwavering from the screens in front of him. "Cassie and Tomas are on their way up," he said.

"Right."

Tony walked to the windows and made a show of looking out at the dull view, just so he could turn around and check out whatever Kort was working on. One of the screens showed a map, what looked like a city. One had a street-level photograph of a building. The third, the one directly in front of Kort, was a crowded spreadsheet. 

Kort ignored him. 

This was usually where Tony would pick a fight.

McGee stood in the doorway while Tony strolled over to one of the walls and studied the huge map they'd stuck up there, showing the western coast of Colombia. It had colored pins all over it – their progress so far on the search for one man, a trafficker close to Londono. Known locations, suspected locations. Recent sightings.

Until the day Kort introduced them to Gray, Tony had been able to chalk every move the man made up to self-interest – to greed and ambition, pure and simple. But Kort's reasons for going alone into that vicious fight with Gray, for sitting in this room and grinding through hour after hour of intel, were as opaque now as they had been in that park nine months ago. Gibbs' team had taken a chance on Kort out of desperation. But Kort had taken a chance on them too. Had shown them restricted photographs of the Calera camp, had introduced them to Gray.

And now Tony didn't want to pick a fight with Kort so much as he wanted to ask why. But Kort wouldn't answer that.

Tony leaned in to study the thin black outline of the coast, wondering again what the beaches were like there. "So. Gray is with Gibbs today."

Kort grunted something that sounded like agreement.

It felt weird to ask Kort anything and expect an answer. But Kort had always been weird about Gray, anyway . . .

Tony jingled the change in his pocket and moved casually down the wall, to a photograph of a man in surfer shorts walking a dog. Their most recent photograph of the trafficker. "You think he'll be alright?"

Tony glanced over and watched a shallow grin ghost over Kort's beat-up face. "Gibbs? Couldn't say."

"Gibbs is always alright," Tony dismissed.

Kort's arm stretched out to turn a page in the open binder propped on the chair next to him, the whisper of paper against paper loud in the quiet. He read whatever was there intently. "Of course. Well then, anyone with him should be fine, shouldn't they."

Cassie stepped through the doorway at that moment. She grinned at McGee, nodding hello. Then she saw Kort, and the grin slipped from her face.

"What happened to you?" Her eyes narrowed. "Where is Gray?"

**x**

Gray stood by the passenger door as Gibbs got out, and they considered each other over the hood of the car. Kid had hair falling in his eyes but didn't move to brush it away. Course, neither of his arms was really working.

His gaze wandered over the neat yard, down the street, and back to Gibbs. "Why don't you just tell me when I should come in?"

Gibbs cocked his head toward the house. "Now's pretty good. Food can be here in thirty."

"That's not what I meant."

Of course not. Rest and food never seemed high on the list of priorities.

"Yeah, I know. Come inside anyway, and we'll talk about it."

Gray hesitated by the car door. He was calmer now than he was before, but still looked dangerous and remote. The bruise spreading across his face only made him look harder, completely out of place in Gibbs' cheerful, tidy suburb.

But he came around the car after a moment, and followed Gibbs into the house without a word.

"You want something to drink?"

Gibbs headed through to the kitchen while Gray hung back in the living room, late sun casting a halo of light around his dark form.

"No."

Gibbs filled a glass with water and walked back into the living room. He sipped it slowly, looking Gray over. Gray looked away.

It made Gibbs' stomach tighten unpleasantly. Gray didn't back down. Never had before, anyway. And he still couldn't read the kid well enough to just know.

"Do you have a problem with Dinozzo, Gray?"

"No."

Gibbs grinned a little. Gray's face had been neutral, maybe a hint of surprise. But Gibbs could see through that now. There was no surprise. And something was going on with Dinozzo.

Gibbs waved a hand at the couch. "Sit."

Gray should have had to hobble there, given the blows he'd taken the night before, but his movements were easy.

Gibbs took the armchair next to him. "If there's a problem you should tell me."

Gray shrugged. "No problem."

Gibbs waited for him to go on. But Gray seemed immune to that kind of pressure.

"If you want to help us track down the rest of the cartel, I'm the one who'll decide how closely you two work together. If there's a problem, you're going to want me to know about it."

Gray looked at him carefully, sifting through the subtle ultimadem. If you want to help us . . .

"I don't have a problem with anyone on your team," he said finally.

"Except Dinozzo," Gibbs prompted.

Gray looked away again, some frustration there, and Gibbs could see what Rodge and Pete were talking about. Gray was letting some of what he was thinking filter through.

"It's nothing."

"So tell me."

"You a micromanager?"

"Only when I need to be." Gibbs sipped the water slowly. "You're a civilian, underage, a target. You've been losing control. Not managing this situation would be irresponsible."

Gray was quiet for a minute, thinking about it. "He's nice. Tony."

Again Gibbs waited. For nothing. "Yeah?"

"Couple days after the FBI took me in that first time?"

Gibbs nodded.

"He was waiting for me. After school."

Something coiled in Gibbs. He trusted Tony implicitly, but Gray didn't. "And?"

"Almost killed him. He told me I had to get in the car, take a trip. Didn't search me or anything," Gray shrugged. "So I went. He took me to a basketball court way out of town. Said if I didn't play he wouldn't drive me back."

Gibbs grinned wryly.

He got a tiny smile in return. "I punched him. He said that was a foul."

Gibbs laughed.

Gray looked down at Gibbs' couch, inspecting the old fabric. "He plays hard."

Gibbs nodded. Waited. Got nothing. "So what's the problem?"

Gray kept his eyes on the couch. "I used him for Burnett's background. Said I needed it for a friend."

Gibbs had figured Tony was the one to slip the stalker's record to Gray. "So? That was true, wasn't it?"

"He didn't want to give it to me, said it was against the rules. Told him he owed me. But he got Diego into that program. And he helped when we got tailed by O'Donnell. And when you got me out of that FBI bust." Gray looked to him for confirmation.

Gibbs nodded. Waited.

"Now with O'Donnell and the cartel . . ." Gray cleared his throat. "He's mixed up in it." The kid's eyes rose to Gibbs'. "But he's not like us."

"What do you mean?"

Gray watched him carefully. "Like Kort and me. And you."

"No," Gibbs said finally. "He isn't. But he can handle it."

Gray went back to studying Gibbs' couch. "It was a trap," he said. "Getting you out of the camp. If we helped you and we had Hernandez too, you would owe us, plus there'd be leverage. You wouldn't have any choice."

"I gave Tony a choice," Gibbs said.

"Had stuff on you and Ziva." Gray went on as if he hadn't heard. "But there isn't anything on – "

"Gray, listen to me."

Gray stilled.

"I gave everyone on my team the option to back out before we tracked down O'Donnell." He waited until he could see that sink in. "None of them took it. Tony and the rest of them have their own reasons for wanting the cartel."

"He's not like us," Gray said again. "McGee either."

Gibbs downed the rest of his water. "No," he said. "They're not. But they don't need to be. I'm not putting them in the field on this one."

Gray seemed to accept that.

"And you don't need Dinozzo to owe you. He takes care of people for free."

Gray shrugged. Gibbs didn't know if that was acceptance, but at least he had a handle on the problem now. On one of them, anyway. "You know, you don't owe us anything, either."

"What's that mean?"

Gibbs fiddled with the glass in his hands, turning it gently, slowly. "Last night you said you were backing out. Leaving town."

"Changed my mind."

Gibbs nodded. "Good."

"So, when should I come - "

He'd give Gray one thing - kid was relentless. Gibbs talked over him. "But you know, you said a few different things, last night."

Gray's eyes shuttered. He already knew.

"Change your mind about all of it?"

Gray didn't say a word. Gibbs was tired of the game.

"You even remember the fight, Gray?"

Gray's free hand flexed and he looked down, startled, at the cast on his fist. As if he had forgotten it was there.

Whatever they'd injected at the hospital to numb the injury would be long gone by now. Gibbs glanced from the cast to Gray's face. "You alright?"

Gray looked up, eyes bright through the hair falling into them. And laughed.

**x**

McGee's computer gave the alert that afternoon. But McGee's computer dinged and chimed and whistled on a fairly regular basis. The rest of the team ignored it.

Ziva and Tony noticed, though, when McGee leaned close into the screen, like he did whenever he was about to pry something impossible out of the ether. And then he went rigid. Like he always did when he'd hit a nugget of intel gold.

"Got something?" Tony asked.

"This alias . . . " McGee frowned and opened another program. "This was flagged . . . "

Tony got up. "Who and where, McGee."

"Michael Stern. Also goes by Michael Magavern," McGee said, "and about ten other names. He has ties to several businesses operated by the Calera cartel, Kort identified him as a gun for hire. I set an alert . . ."

"Where, McGee?"

"Flew from Accra to Paris yesterday." McGee scanned the screen quickly. "Due into Philadelphia . . . this morning," McGee declared. He looked up. "Trains and buses from Philly don't even require ID. He could be here now."

Tony took out his phone and called Gibbs.

**x**

Gibbs snagged the prescriptions from Ducky and a bottle of Motrin from the downstairs bathroom. He called the pizza place and put in an order for two large pies, filled a glass with water, and dug a box of crackers out from the pantry. The essentials - pills, liquid, carbs - he set in front of Gray.

The kid watched the operation lazily and didn't comment. Or move.

Then again, he'd probably have to use his teeth to get the cap off that bottle. Gibbs leaned forward to twist it open and shook two tablets onto a napkin next to the water. "These are probably stale," he said, waving at the crackers. "But you should eat something with that. Real food's on the way."

Gray was still smirking from his fit of laughter before, expression loose and dark. "Thanks." He looked at the pills on the table without reaching for them.

"Don't work if you don't take them," Gibbs said.

"Those don't work either way."

Gibbs paused. "You want something else?"

Gray glanced at his own hand, discolored fingers poking out from the metal and plastic cast. The entire mess was grotesquely swollen. "You don't have what I want, Gibbs," he said.

Gibbs squinted out toward the street. Gray turned down everything but local anesthetic in the hospital. This hadn't actually occurred to him.

Which was pretty stupid, in retrospect. "You using again, Gray?"

"No."

Gibbs took his time, searching for the tell. One he'd never yet been able to find in Gray's face.

"You want me to piss in a cup?"

Gibbs kind of did. "No," he said. "Just want the truth."

"Well," Gray's voice was soft, cool. "That's in short supply."

"Yeah," Gibbs sighed. "Always is."

Gray stared at him. It was actually chilling.

"I didn't lie to you. Never knew where your mom was," Gibbs said. "Kort doesn't whisper his secrets my way."

Gray didn't really react to that. He'd gone hard again, and impossible to read. Gibbs refocused on the injured hand resting carelessly at Gray's side. And the issue at hand.

Years back he'd been able to bull his way through PTSD and amnesia. But he'd never even come close to laughing them off.

"I guess memory loss is a funnier issue for you than it was for me."

"Hilarious," Gray confirmed.

Gibbs had discussed this with Ducky, obliquely. "Doc tells me the drugs they gave you in Colombia could be part of the problem with your memory now."

"It's not that bad," Gray muttered.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. He'd heard that same mutter from countless Marines and agents. And now kids. None of them particularly believable. "Then tell me how bad it is."

No retreat possible here. Eventually Gray tried to go around. "Holly's got a lady at the clinic's been helping with it," he said finally. "It's better."

"You missed your meeting at the clinic last week," Gibbs countered.

Gray shrugged, unconcerned.

"I didn't get the impression those kinds of meetings were optional."

"Optional for what?" he challenged.

"For recovery," Gibbs said coolly.

Gray hadn't expected that, and backed down. "Was busy."

"Uh huh. Busy hiding from Kort?"

"Yeah," Gray said easily.

"You didn't go to any of your crew's safe houses last week. Not even the one Kort doesn't know." Cassie told Gibbs that Gray had been totally out of touch with all of them, even with Sean. And she said this wasn't the first time. "Why?"

Gray didn't answer.

"You ever lose time with Sean? The other kids?"

Gray was looking right at him. But his eyes were far away, busy elsewhere. "You didn't get this from last night."

"Not entirely."

"From what?"

"First time, when you pulled your gun on Dinozzo. In Colombia," Gibbs said. "I didn't get the impression you really knew where you were."

Gray was silent, gazing at his hands. And then, weirdly, he relaxed back into the couch. He caught Gibbs' confusion and shrugged. "Didn't realize you've known since then."

So he'd been worried about Gibbs' reaction if he did find out.

"I've seen it before," Gibbs said. "It's not uncommon." For someone with Gray's history it'd be more surprising if his mind hadn't come up with a way to shove it all down.

"So I've heard."

"You have any memory of what happened with Dinozzo?"

A longer silence. "Cut Ziva free. Got the bags. Had my gun on him."

"You don't remember how that happened?"

"He surprise me?"

He looked unconcerned. But Gibbs could see that Gray was intensely uncomfortable. It was in his posture - holding himself a little differently than usual - and in his hand on the couch, flat and motionless.

"Yeah," Gibbs said. "He surprised you. Same as Abby last week, I think."

Gray gazed at him neutrally and said nothing. Gray-speak for miserable, as far as Gibbs could tell.

"That ever happen at home?"

Gray tilted his head. A nod.

Gibbs hazarded a guess. "That's why you didn't go home last week."

Another head tilt. And then, as if it was nothing, "Bad days I don't go home."

"How often is that?"

"After Colombia, with you." Gray paused to see if he understood and Gibbs nodded. Cassie told them that Gray was gone for at least three weeks last May – significantly longer than the team was. Wherever the kid went after they were debriefed and released by the CIA, it wasn't home.

But that had been an unusually bad series of days.

"When else?"

"After Diego, when I got shot." Gray gestured to his leg. "Spent the night here."

Gibbs nodded. He remembered Gray telling Cassie that it would be better if he spent the night at Gibbs house. But -

"I thought you might have stayed here because some of the other kids were angry," Gibbs said. "About the way Diego died."

"Yeah, they were. I kicked him out."

Gibbs hadn't known that. "Because he was using?"

"Have to be clean to stay at the house," Gray said. "That's rule number one, Gibbs."

"So you didn't go home because you wanted to give them time to cool off," Gibbs clarified.

Gray sighed. "This matters?"

"Yeah. It matters."

Gray stared at the coffee table, organizing his thoughts. "I didn't go home to give me time. They weren't going to . . . cool off. I threw him out. He's dead."

Gibbs hesitated, aware this probably wouldn't go over well. "You did the right thing."

"Diego dead can't be the right thing," Gray said, colorless.

Gibbs let it go. "When else?"

"You know," Gray waved vaguely, tiredly at Gibbs, "this past week."

"When else?"

"That's it."

Gibbs watched him closely. That was hard to believe.

"Told you it wasn't that bad."

Gibbs didn't respond, trying to figure it out. Either Gibbs' team taking the kid to Colombia had been the start of it or something here had changed for Gray.

"What," Gray said tersely.

"Ever seriously hurt anyone?"

Gray looked at him.

"Unintentionally, I mean. When you're out of it."

"Don't remember everyone with Dex. Or the cartel," he said stiffly.

"Afterwards," Gibbs clarified again. "When you knew you were with friends."

"Kort," Gray said. "Last night." He shifted and winced, and finally leaned forward for the tablets on the table, gulping them with the water. Gibbs nudged the box of crackers toward him and Gray perfunctorily swallowed one.

"Who else?"

"I - what do you mean? What's 'seriously hurt'?" He wasn't really acting any differently, but Gibbs could feel the agitation rising in the room. "Your forensic – um, Scuito, is that serious?"

"No," Gibbs said calmly. "Abby insisted she wasn't hurt at all." He watched Gray relax slightly. "Anyone else?"

"No."

Really. "Really?"

Gray shrugged, nonchalant. "Used to beat the shit out of Diego."

The best friend? "And he didn't mind?"

"He beat the shit out of me back."

Right. And now Diego was gone.

"That why you went after Kort, Gray? You need someone to spar with?"

"No."

Gibbs grinned a little, bleakly amused. "Do you remember why you went after Kort?"

"Yeah. Only parts are blurry. The end."

"Huh." Gibbs studied him. Gray returned the stare like a pro for the first few minutes, then looked away.

It was a good long time before he spoke. "That it?"

"Hm?"

Gray seemed to steel himself. "Anything else, Captain Gibbs?"

"Yeah," Gibbs said. "But I'm afraid of jinxing it."

"Jinxing?"

"You're answering a lot of questions, Gray."

"You want me to stop?"

"No," Gibbs said firmly. "Just like to know what's inspiring all this cooperation." He paused and looked thoughtfully into the distance. "Dinozzo reacts like this to pizza," he said finally. "But usually not until it's actually been delivered."

Gray's face was stony, utterly unamused.

Gibbs didn't care. "Does the idea of pizza undo you, Gray?"

"No."

"Then what's up?"

Gray gave him an incredulous look. "You for real?"

"Yeah," Gibbs said. "I'm always for real."

"You came through. On O'Donnell," he said simply.

Gibbs waited for him to go on, but he didn't. That was it.

Gibbs didn't buy it. "Really. All I had to do all along was take care of Declan O'Donnell?"

"No. I want in on the rest."

"What do you mean by 'in'?"

"I told you," Gray said slowly. Patiently. "I want in with the cartel. To be sure."

Gibbs sat back in the seat. "And you thought I wasn't going to let you help us out?"

Gray looked at him warily. When the words came he spoke like he was edging closer to a cliff. "You said before that I was too young. It's a crime to work with me."

Gibbs nodded. "Since you were listening so carefully you also know that I backed off of that when you confirmed your involvement would actually help us to protect you. What's the real reason?"

Gray took a breath. "I wasn't in control, last night. And – with the memory thing I thought you would rethink it. Me."

Gibbs cocked his head. "Like I said, confused memories and some loss of control aren't too uncommon. It's not the end of the world."

Gray laughed.

"What?"

"When you lost your memory you quit your job," he said.

Trust him to know that. And read a life lesson into it, apparently. "Yeah well, that was more severe than what you're dealing with." He smiled a little and gave in to Gray's stare, which clearly called bullshit. "And that wasn't exactly my finest hour."

Gray looked about as restless as a motionless person could get. There was something else he needed to hear, Gibbs just wasn't sure what. "You been honest with me about all of this?"

Gray looked at him darkly.

It wouldn't have been easy to lay it all out like he just had. But Gray had always been honest, as far as Gibbs could tell. Mostly silent, but when he did open his mouth, the truth generally came out.

Gibbs held up his hands to show he'd meant no offense. "Then I don't think it's that big of a problem, just like you said. As long as you keep getting help for it."

Gray didn't say anything else. But Gibbs' gut was still telling him they were teetering on an edge, hovering over something sharp.

"What else, Gray?"

Gray was silent for a long moment. "You said I had to stop attacking your people," he said quietly. "After that night here."

The night Gray held McGee paralyzed at the end of Gibbs' own rifle. "Yeah, I did."

Gray's eyes slid over to study Gibbs, like he was wondering if Gibbs was screwing with him. "I already did it again. With Abby."

"Yeah," Gibbs said. "I know."

Gray didn't say anything else.

"You have to get better at that."

Gray stiffened almost imperceptibly, and Gibbs could see how impossible his demand was, from the other side.

"What if I don't get better at it?"

"You will."

Gray didn't seem to find that very convincing.

"In the meantime," Gibbs said, "since I understand the problem I can take responsibility for it."

"What?" Gray leaned forward. "Pardon?"

"I know what to be aware of now," Gibbs explained. "So I can take precautions. According to what you've just told me you have enough control to warn me when there's potential for a problem," he said seriously. "When you're having a bad day. And from now on you will do that."

Gray watched him, waiting for the rest of it.

"You going to do that?" Gibbs pressed.

A slow nod.

"Okay," Gibbs shrugged.

"So . . ." Gray frowned at him doubtfully. "I can come in?"

"You're already in, Gray."

"That's not what I meant."

Gibbs grinned. "I know." He stood and stretched, picking up the empty water glass from the table. "You can stay here tonight. If you're feeling alright tomorrow we'll go in together, look through some photos and the interview notes." Gibbs winced slightly, thinking of the piles of paper Kort had already worked up. "Summaries, anyway."

Gray was still for a moment, eyes on the glass in Gibbs' hands. "Anyone else stay here?"

"Not usually. That a problem?"

"No."

Obviously it was. But Gray had to stay somewhere.

"You can call Cass to stay over if you want. Or Ziva. Or Tony."

Gray's head swiveled to look directly at him, eyes glinting like steel in the sun streaming through the windows. "It's fine."

Gibbs let it go. He'd been planning an absurdly complicated op for weeks. He'd been up all night and in the same clothes for two days. He was tired.

"Okay. I'm going to clean up." He checked his watch. Still had fifteen minutes, probably, until the food was delivered. He tossed two twenties on the table anyway. "Should cover dinner. You be here when I get back."

Fifteen minutes later he came down, freshly showered, to an empty living room.

There were two pizza boxes on the kitchen table, a pile of change on top. And his phone was on the coffee table. Blinking. Three missed calls.

He picked up the cell and dialed the last number in.

"Boss," Dinozzo said. "We have a problem by the name of Michael Stern. McGee's sending you the photo."


	35. Empty Houses

Gibbs shut his phone and gazed at the couch. The house was silent, but it didn't feel empty. He walked to the top of the basement stairs. Dark. On a hunch he looked out the window, scanning the deck. Gray was roaming his backyard.

The sun was almost gone as he stepped out, pulling the door closed behind him, and Gibbs' breath frosted in the glow of the porch light. He watched for a minute and was ignored, though Gray must have known he was there.

"Aren't you cold?"

Gray cocked his head, motion strange. "Flowers?"

Kept saying her garden was soothing, Gibbs thought. "Not now. Should be, come summer."

Gray walked the perimeter slow, barely pacing. "Color?"

Gibbs cleared his throat against the dry air, crossed his arms over his chest. "Red."

It was freezing. Still felt good after a night in the hospital and a day indoors.

Gray touched a finger, gently, to a thorn.

They didn't have time. "Come inside, Gray."

Gray stared at a squat little evergreen bush. "Don't know this one."

"Checkerberry."

He moved again, paused in front of another rosebush. "Lot of flowers."

"Not in March. Come on."

Gray followed Gibbs in and drifted, silent, to stand in the foyer between the living room and kitchen. It was the only spot on the ground floor with clear line of sight to the front and back entrance, and no view from any of the windows. His first time in the house Gibbs stood in that spot for half an hour, watching his wife and the real estate agent admire the fireplace and the molding and the floors.

Gibbs had been twitchy, just back from Grenada. And something had spooked Gray. Staying here maybe, or Gibbs asking him to stay? Or the roses or the drugs. Or anything else, really.

"Here." Gibbs shoved the pizza boxes across the table toward him. "We can eat downstairs." Didn't matter who was trying to kill you or how paranoid you might be about it - the basement was a bunker, no decent shot through its high windows at all.

Gibbs made up a mug of coffee-flavored milk and followed with the plates. Gray perched himself on the stool by the workbench. When Gibbs set the mug down next to him he went for it straightaway.

"Hold on." Gibbs dug a ratty sweatshirt out from the shelf under the bench, faded blue Marines stenciled across the front. His basement wasn't any warmer now than it had ever been. "Come on," he gestured, "arms out."

The ancient cuff stretched over the cast easily, barely touching it, and the fit was loose enough to slip over Gray's head without pulling at his shoulder. "Marines look good on you," Gibbs smirked.

Gray reached for the steaming coffee again. "Dream on."

Gibbs leaned back against the bench, smile fading as his eyes followed Grays', settling on the middle of the room and the project gathering dust there. Gray's mug tilted toward the raw outline of Mike's coffin. "Not much progress."

"Nope. Been busy."

The words hung in the air between them, like motes suspended in light. Like ash.

He'd been steering his mind away from it all week. But there was nowhere else to go, now, with the boy beside him. He smoothed a hand over the work bench, skin so callused he hardly felt the nicks scarring the wood anymore. "I am sorry about your mom."

Gray was still, transfixed by Mike's coffin. His voice, when it came, seemed to sail out of the clear blue. "Your friend still alive?"

"Yeah." Gibbs picked up one of the pizza boxes and walked around the table, pulling a chair out from under it. He set the box off to the side and squinted at the panel of wood clamped to the workspace, finally picking out one of the finer chisels. "He's with his family," he added.

What was past couldn't be changed. All he could do now was focus on what had to happen next. Try to do it better. And the question Gibbs started out with was still unanswered.

"You ditch your phone, Gray?"

"Yeah."

"Going to replace it?"

No answer. Gibbs concentrated on the thin, perfect curve of a petal. "What if Sean needs to reach you?"

Nothing.

"Sean never needs you?"

"Not your business."

"So that's a yes."

"That's a fuck off."

Gibbs moved on to another petal. And another.

"Sean needs you."

"Sean is fine."

"Yeah?" Gibbs would probably pay for pushing it with the family. Problem was there was nothing else to push, with Gray. "How about Cassie?"

Gray's voice went sly. "Fine."

Gibbs ignored it. "Maybe your people will put up with you disappearing on them. But if we're going to work together I need to be able to get in touch with you."

"What's stopping you Jethro? Something wrong with your arms?"

Gibbs straightened. That was more than sly.

He leaned in to blow a little pile of shavings out of the depression he'd just carved. Kid kept nudging things that way, testing him. "It's Gibbs. And I think you know I'm never going to touch you sexually."

Gray laughed.

Gibbs pressed the chisel into the little circular groove etched between the fat ovals, the center of the flower, and pushed it gently, steadily forward. "Something funny?"

"It's usually more 'I would never touch you.'"

Gibbs followed the line, watched a thin curl of wood fall away, and said nothing.

"Or 'I would never hurt you'?"

"Can't say that, can I?" He switched out the chisel for the sharp edge of an exacto knife. "You come after me or my agents the way you went after Kort and I'll take you down."

Gray sat perfectly still, focus on Gibbs total. "I was kidding."

Gibbs huffed. "With Kort? Looked pretty serious to me."

"Not about Kort," Gray said, still so calm. "About you and me fucking."

Like hell he was.

"Don't," Gibbs said shortly.

"Aye aye, Cap." He moved to slide to his feet. "That all?"

"No. Never made Captain," Gibbs said. "And you never answered the question. I need to be able to get in touch with you." He paused. Gray was right, it wasn't any of his business . . . but those lines had been messed up from the start. "And you shouldn't be out of touch with the family you have left."

A minute passed in silence. Another time, Gibbs might have waited all night. But he didn't have all night. "Well?"

"Well what?"

Gibbs grinned down at the plank of wood under his hands. "How about I get you an NCIS phone?"

"For my birthday? If NCIS is buying I'll take a humvee."

"Offer's one encrypted cell phone. If you'll use it. What do you say?"

"No."

At least it was a solid answer. Gibbs set down the knife and reached for the pizza. "Why not?"

"To answer a phone it has to be on. You can track the location of any phone that's on. Might as well let you microchip me like a dog." Gray's head turned slightly, breaking his stare with Gibbs to look over the workbench. He picked up one of the clamps resting on it with his good hand and turned it over critically, making the sliding element rattle. "With a little help from your geek you can probably use it to listen to conversations. Might as well wear a mike."

Given his team's history of tracking Gray without his knowledge that was a fair point. Gibbs wiped his hands on a napkin and picked the knife back up. "I don't spy on my own people."

"I'm not your people."

That was debatable. Gibbs only felt this deeply uneasy for his people.

But that wasn't the sort of argument you could actually win with a debate.

"I'm not going to use your phone to spy on you." Gibbs searched for the words, and basically repeated what Ducky had thrown at him last night. What Duck had thrown at him off and on for the last fifteen years, really. "We need to be able to communicate if we're going to help each other."

No response.

"Well?"

Gray dropped the clamp and reached for the food. "You just said you'd never fuck me. But if someone held a gun to your head we both know you would. Maybe you wouldn't use a phone to track me unless you thought you had a great reason. And then you wouldn't care what you said – you'd use it to find me."

Gray chewed through a slice of pizza while Gibbs tried to figure out what to say to that. He was pretty sure this was another argument he wasn't going to win with a debate. It would only be turned with time. But ignoring it in the moment didn't seem like a good idea, either.

"I'm not going to put you into a situation where a gun will be pointed at anyone's head. It shouldn't have happened before." He waited for an acknowledgement that didn't come. But he had Gray's attention, at least. Just don't be squeamish - "And I'm not going to have sex with you in any situation. I wouldn't be able to. I said it would never happen because it'll never happen."

Gray's eyebrows rose theatrically. "You can't get it up?"

"For you? No."

The kid grinned and rocked precariously back on the stool, never mind cracked ribs that must've hurt like hell. "Bet Holly could help you with that."

Gibbs returned his attention to the panel in front of him. A knot was distorting the shape of one of the leaves. "Fall off that stool and Ducky will lock you in the hospital for a week. What you said about the phone is probably true," he shrugged. "If I had reason to believe you were in danger and you weren't answering I'd try tracking you with it. That such a bad deal?"

He etched the vein of a leaf while Gray thought over what was apparently a complicated question.

"How do you know it's safe to talk?" Gray probed.

"After the scare we had with the FBI, McGee set up some monitors. He'd let me know if the house had been compromised." Gibbs' focus was on the wood in front of him. But he could feel Gray's stare become more intense. "What's on your mind?"

"What would happen? If somebody found out. You lose your job?"

Gibbs frowned. "You realize what we're doing isn't legal?"

Gray gave an awkward one-shoulder shrug. "Kort says they can bend the rules if they think it's necessary."

"Sometimes. CIA's been known to do that. But Kort can't get this one approved. That's part of why he came to me."

"But . . . now you can't get it approved?"

Ah. "There was never any question of that. NCIS doesn't get a pass to play with the law the way the CIA does."

"So, prison."

"If we were charged and convicted, yeah." Not that it would ever get that far.

"For life."

"For multiple pre-meditated homicides? Yeah. Probably." Gibbs set the knife aside again, and reached for a tiny sandpaper brush.

"What about your team?"

"Same," he said easily. "They know the risk."

Gray seemed to mull that over.

Gibbs went back to his chisel. "But we're not going to be charged or convicted of anything," he reminded him. "There's nothing to worry about."

Gray saw through it. "Kort told me one time that the CIA does whatever it takes to keep an operation out of the news."

Gibbs sighed. "Yeah."

"A trial like that would be big news."

"Yep."

"So life in prison, if you're lucky. And assassination by the Agency if you're not lucky." Gray paused, thinking over all the fun possibilities. "Or you could just get killed by the cartel."

Gibbs shrugged. "Only if we get caught."

A few beats of silence, and Gibbs straightened his shoulders, looking up from his work to catch Gray's eyes.

Gibbs grinned. His turn to be sly. "Makes you nervous, doesn't it?"

"You getting yourself killed? I think I'd get over it."

"I'm sure you would. I'm talking about you working with someone you don't have a hold over."

Gray smiled back. "You want me to hold you?"

Gibbs turned to the woodworking debris strewn around the table, looking for a finer grain of paper. "Thought I asked you not to kid around about that."

Gray's smile melted into a leer. "That's not kidding, Gibbs. That's innuendo."

"No, it's habit," he corrected mildly. "Not a good one." He found the 100 grain, pulled out a fresh sheet. "O'Donnell used sex as a weapon, so you turned it around. Used it to manipulate him." Gibbs waited a beat, digging out a pair of scissors. It was good to have the project in front of him. "Come in handy with anyone else?"

Gray cocked his head. "I don't kiss and tell, Gibbs."

"Course not. Blackmail wouldn't work if you did," Gibbs agreed.

"No, it wouldn't."

"You've had a hold over pretty much everyone you ever worked with, or you did." Gibbs paused, focused on squaring off the rough paper in front of him, long enough to make it obvious that Gray wasn't about to respond. "Had a murder charge on me, before all the Reynosa evidence was deemed inadmissible."

"Murder? You?"

Gibbs looked up and Gray's eyes laughed back at him. Laughed.

Gibbs wondered, suddenly, if the meds Duck gave him for Gray, the ones he'd sworn up and down were non-addictive, could still make the kid goofy. Like Dinozzo got goofy - unpredictable. Vulnerable.

"Shocked, I say," Gray declared.

"You control information about the cartel and the location of fields the CIA is after. You control Kort's access to his daughter."

Gray was quiet. He looked interested, though. Waiting for Gibbs to go on.

"Cass and Tomas, all the rest of the kids, they need your money and connections. Your protection."

"You think I'm blackmailing my friends? Cynical man."

"Are they your friends?"

Gray leaned forward. "What _is_ a friend? You know what I just realized?"

That didn't sound good. "No."

"I haven't really been at my best whenever we've talked before, you know? Shot and incarcerated and all that. This is fun though. I like this. Did you pick up philosophy in the Marines, Captain Gibbs?"

Gibbs had to agree. Negotiating with Gray was easier all the other times, when he was beat up or locked up or in shock.

"Knowing what a friend is isn't philosophy." Gibbs frowned at an uneven edge. "It's life. I'm your friend. Tomas and Cass are your friends, even if it didn't start out that way. You're just lucky your friends are such talented people."

"Mm," Gray nodded. "Lucky."

Gibbs smoothed over the edge one last time and considered the carving in front of him. It would need sealant before it was ready for finish and paint. "You feel guilty about that?"

"About my incredible luck?"

Gibbs grinned, tried to be gentle. "That they're only with you because you bought them, and you only bought them because they were strong. That you couldn't afford to take on kids who weren't assets."

Silence. And then -

"Of course I could. I'm a rich boy."

Gibbs glanced up.

Gray was examining a jar of tiny nails. Smiling a little, aware of the absurdity of his words - a skinny, shabby, beat-up, fucked-up kid in tattered clothes. Gibbs would peg him for homeless if he didn't know better.

"But friends can be expensive," Gray said. "You were a bargain, I guess. Lots of new NCIS friends, all for the price of one." He set the jar down and moved on to the next one on the shelf.

Not everyone Gray got out would have been a physical asset, necessarily. Some of the ones hidden in Gibbs' basement the night O'Donnell appeared were simply too young. So they'd been smuggled out for other reasons.

"So you took out weaker kids." And everything with Gray was a bargain, a deal. "For a price."

What could kids like that possibly pay? Gray certainly didn't need money, he'd stolen plenty of that from the cartel.

Gibbs checked the fit of the panel against the larger frame. It was good.

 _Hit fast, run fast, that's how we survived_ . . . He dragged over a new panel from a stack of them, rough shape of flowers and leaves still coarse, and adjusted the clamps around it. _Brilliant girl . . ._ He picked up the chisel, ready to start again. _He's the best . . ._

He'd needed a damn good team, to survive. And then climb the ranks in a bloody cartel. That talent was what he'd bought with his protection. But then he'd needed their trust, too, to set up an escape. To deceive the cartel, all this time - that was absolute loyalty. Beyond a cartel's money or bribes, beyond fear.

Beyond price.

Only one thing in this world beyond price. "You recruited the best. And for services rendered you got their families out?" Gibbs wondered if any of the young ones in his basement that night had been Cassie's little sisters, or brothers, even. The thought almost made him smile.

"Not whole families, I'm not an immigration service. We got one each." Gray put down the jar he'd been looking at, moving on to the folder set beside it.

Just one of Cassie's sisters, then. One for Tomas. One for Diego . . . "So you've bought or blackmailed everyone you risk working with," Gibbs said soberly. "Doesn't mean you have to buy me."

Gray opened the folder held idly in his hands, tilted it to look at the first picture. Froze.

Gibbs went back to his chisel.

"What is this?"

"Team pulled photos from surveillance we thought you might want," Gibbs said easily. One of Dinozzo's better moments. Probably. Nothing to do now but see how it played out.

"These are old."

"Calera surveillance goes back a long time."

"Kort?" Gray pressed.

"Some, yeah."

"And Rodge."

Gibbs rolled his shoulders, muscles tense and tired. Thinking he was too old to sleep in hospital chairs. Thinking maybe he'd put a pot on. Hoping, mostly, that this intrusion didn't lead to anger, didn't end up setting them back.

Tony didn't think it would, though. And Tony would know. "I do have a few connections of my own."

Shuffling, and a pause.

"Haven't ID'd a lot of the faces in those," Gibbs prompted. "And plenty we found in them don't turn up in more recent coverage."

"Dead," Gray said absently. "Probably. This one's Diego. Me and him in El Valle."

Dead. That made sense. It was just hard to conclusively prove, years on and thousands of miles away.

Shuffling, and another long pause, and Gibbs busied himself with his wooden flowers.

"How'd you get this?"

Not angry, that Gibbs could tell. Not surprised. Not anything.

"Abby found your mom's birth certificate after we ID'd her. With the full name Kort was able to track down the apartment she'd rented in Brooklyn, from there a storage unit. Furniture, mostly."

Gray handled each image with exquisite care, leafing through them on a slow, endless loop.

"Where's that one with the roses?" Gibbs asked finally. It was a beautiful photograph. Not surveillance - a family photo, happy, loving. Private.

A good long wait. 

"We didn't have a yard. She bought cut ones for inside, kept pots on the fire escape. Your wife liked red ones?"

Didn't take an expert to see that a lot of Gibbs' garden had been there a long time. Shannon and that real estate agent had practically mapped out a twenty year plan. "Yeah."

"My mother said the red ones looked like blood. She'd only grow white and yellow." He stopped, and Gibbs thought he was done. But then Gray went on, like he couldn't stop himself from offering up a picture of his own. "So that's what all the flower guys called her, when we'd go by you know, it was all 'Yo sunshine lady, yo lace, I got you flowers here  - " He slipped seamless into a Brooklyn accent, like Al Pacino doing himself, and Gibbs grinned. "Come on over mamacita, I got them nice ones for you hey.'" Gray smirked. "Funeral homes would take the whites. But nobody else bought the yellows."

Gibbs was quiet, letting something warm, something finally good, settle over them. His mother was dead. But Gray already understood something about loss that it had taken Gibbs half a lifetime to learn. About how the dead could live on, in a way, and not in pain. How the memory could be good, if you could let it.

"I figured out why your team was pissed at you," Gray said abruptly. "In Colombia."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"You left them," Gray said. He kept rotating through the pictures, like he wanted to look at all of them at once.

Gibbs' eyes wandered to the bourbon sitting innocently behind Gray's head. Could just imagine what Ducky would say. Gibbs picked up another slice of pizza instead. "I got kidnapped."

"You gave up."

Gibbs had accepted getting arrested, even though it stunk of a Reynosa plot. In a way, maybe he'd given up. "That fight was personal. I was trying to keep my people out of it."

"You gave them up."

Gibbs didn't say anything.

"Anyway, they can't be out of it." Gray paused, preoccupied by the ghosts in the photographs. "That's not how it works. That's what Tony says."

That's what Tony says?

"Guess I might have gotten that wrong," Gibbs allowed. "Lucky I got a second chance."

Shuffling photographs, slower, faster. "You think she was wrong," Gray said lowly. "Siding with Londono."

Gibbs finished off the slice in his hand. "What I think doesn't matter. But I'm not sure that she did side with him. It was a complicated situation." Was there a way to say it delicately? Gibbs decided Gray did better with blunt. "And now you'll never know her side of it."

Gray went back to leafing through the folder, and Gibbs went back to the vines on Mike's coffin.

"I don't know. Maybe. Feels like she left us."

Gibbs nodded. "That's grief."

Gray frowned. "I mean before, in Colombia."

"That's grief, too."

Gray sat still for awhile. "Would you tell me, if it was you?"

"No."

He was ready for some kind of outburst, but Gray didn't go that way. "Why not?"

"Because knowing who she was with didn't matter. She was still unreachable."

"Didn't matter."

Gibbs grimaced. Those weren't the right words. "It would torture you to know where she was. That's why O'Donnell told you, and Kort didn't."

Shuffling again. Steady now, like a metronome. "I don't care if the truth is good or not. If I work with you I want to know."

"Would you have been able to stop yourself from going after her?"

No answer.

Gibbs hadn't thought so. "Kort saved your life by keeping it quiet," he said. "I'd do the same." He hesitated, but Dinozzo had pushed him to be honest, and Kort, and his own gut - well, hell. "And I think it's what your mother would have wanted."

Gray pulled his good arm into his ribs. "She picked Londono," he said after a moment.

"Because she thought she'd already lost you."

"She did," he said. "She knew."

"No." Gibbs resisted intensity. Matched the calm in Gray's voice instead. "She didn't get the chance to know you."

"She knew what happened when you joined them," Gray countered. "She warned me and I ran with them anyway. You're the one doesn't know her, or me."

"Well who does?"

"Does what?"

"Who does know you?"

Blank gaze. Just absolutely empty.

"Cassie? Tomas? Rodge and Pete? Kort?"

Gray lowered his head and his good hand came up, slow and stiff, to rub the hair back from his eyes. "I bought their loyalty," he said flatly. "Like you said."

"Maybe at first," Gibbs agreed. "But that's not why they're with you now. Loyalty like that can't be bought, Gray."

Gray seemed to consider that, and Gibbs held his breath.

"It was supposed to be for them," Gray said. "For Sean and her."

"I know."

Gray looked at him, still empty. No expression, no anticipation. Nothing left to say. Down that way there was nothing but a bottle, or a drug. Or a gun.

"You have to move on," Gibbs said. "For the people you have left."

Gray looked away, scanning the wood pile at the far end of the basement. Gibbs didn't need to see his face, though, to know.

"It's not the same," Gray said.

"No."

Long minutes slipped by. Gray closed the folder, still holding it tightly in his good hand. He looked at Gibbs, and gestured slightly with it.

"You're welcome," Gibbs said lightly. Moving on. "If you want to return the favor you can carry a phone. And answer it when your friends are trying to reach you."

"Friends like you?"

Gray's voice was ironic. Gibbs' wasn't. "Yep."

Gibbs gently, gently ground the rough edges away from the slender neck of a vine, and Gray watched him.

"I'll check messages," he said at last. "And if I'm in trouble I'll even think about turning it on, how's that. You and whoever's trying to kill me can both track away."

"Deal." Finally. Gibbs dug his phone out of his pocket and tossed it across the table.

Gray eyed it like old-fashioned was a disease that might be catching. "Generous. But I'll get my own."

"Damn right. The most recent text is a picture," Gibbs said. "Take a look."

Gray slid off the stool, already wary, and reluctantly set down the folder to pick up the phone. He had the picture in moments.

Gibbs could tell he recognized him.

"Where?" Gray said.

"Team pulled it from security at Union Station."

"Today?"

"Less than three hours ago."

Gray put the phone down and looked at Gibbs with a face that said nothing at all.

"You recognize him?" Gibbs asked.

"Yeah."

"We need to know everything you know."

Gray's eyes went distant. Too much?

"Start with his name," Gibbs prompted.

"Name's Barbi."

Gray elaborated at Gibbs' look. "Don't know his real name. Everybody called him Barbi. Yellow hair, blue eyes, tall, American. Barbi."

"Sure he's American?"

Gray lifted his eyes to the wall above Gibbs' head. Gibbs waited patiently as he sorted memories. "Yeah. American."

"What else? He's traveling under the name Michael Stern. That ring a bell?"

"Name's meaningless." Gray's voice was rote, elsewhere. "Fake or useless, tagged or will be soon. Nobody uses a name that means anything."

"Any idea why he's here?"

"Only the same idea you already have."

"And what is that?"

"Diablo or his people got word to Londono that we're in DC. Barbi leads a squad. He's here to clean up."

"Squad as in death squad?"

"Yeah."

Gibbs had heard of them. Just never heard of one operating on US soil. "So there'll be others with him?"

"Yeah."

"How many?"

Gray shrugged.

"Two? Ten?"

"Small for this. At least two. No more than six."

"What's Barbi like?"

"Don't know. Never worked with him."

"But you recognize him. He famous? Like Diablo?"

"No." Gray paused again, and Gibbs centered his attention on him. No pretense of chisels and sandpaper. "I asked about him once. To learn. From him," Gray clarified. "He's good. Barb's organized. Not impulsive. Doesn't freelance. Doesn't play."

"Play?" Gibbs said sharply.

"He's clean. No . . . personal hits. No games. No patterns. Fast, efficient." A shrug. "Good. His team's the same."

"Would you recognize who he's with?"

Gray considered. "Probably not. He switched them up. Drew from outside."

"Outside?"

"Outside the cartel."

"Sure he's here for you?"

A pause, thinking it over. Then thinking out loud. "Who else? You? Londono wouldn't go after you full force, not here. If he wants you dead it has to look normal. Car accident. Heart attack. But that would still leave your team. Can't all have heart attacks. If the cartel knows what O'Donnell did then they know that Sean and Cass and I are here and that we have contact with you. Now they're thinking about what we know. What we could do as witnesses, or outside the law. What happened to Diablo." Another pause, musing. "Londono might think that was me."

Which would be right, really, Gibbs thought. It was Gray, in the end, who brought O'Donnell down. It would be Gray's influence that finally brought down the cartel. And Londono might have an inkling, now, if he was really as clever as everyone said he was. Might finally realize he'd raised up a snake in the grass.

Gibbs reached for the phone to get the alias to McGee. Gray followed the movement.

"We'll get him," Gibbs said.

Gray nodded.

Gibbs talked to McGee and then put in a call to Vance, filling him in in the vaguest terms possible. Gray picked up his empty mug with swollen fingers, the half-empty pizza box with his good arm, and ghosted up the stairs.

When Gibbs ended the call he sat for a moment, thinking. Vance was pushing the safe house idea again, even though Gray didn't seem to think Londono's goons would come after Gibbs directly.

That was conjecture, though. Who could be sure how far Londono would go?

Gibbs stood. He'd run it by Gray -

He paused in his thoughts then, cocking his head to listen. The house was quiet. Too quiet.

He swept every room, and the garden too, to be sure of what he already knew. It was empty.

**x**

You can't rush science. That's one of the things Abby loved about it. If you were being honest, you couldn't rush anything good. Science just had the decency to be upfront about it.

What you can do is rush yourself. You can get up before the crack of dawn and start your science early. Abby got to work at 0500 and used the side entrance. It was her favorite entrance, leading right down to the lab, with a key that Morrow had to get a special waiver from the Security Director to even make. She had clearance and didn't carry what the agency would consider a weapon, so having her log in through the front door was unnecessary. That's what she'd argued. The security department was happy to make an exception anyway, in her case. She bugged out their metal detectors.

By 05:25 she'd taken over the search for Death Squad Barbi from McGee and put him down for a nap, intent on expanding the initial program Tim was running through her international network and the lab's more powerful servers.

Writing the program ate some time. McGee was gone when she looked up. Nothing calling but the hum of the machines and the slant of the sun on the floor, telling her it was already afternoon. She had four computers running searches through global databases, with a search parameter of "tall," basically, since hair and eye-color could change - no matter how that brave yet incontrovertible fact continued to piss Gibbs off.

If they found anything at all she would be surprised. If they got a hit inside a month she'd consider it a miracle. But Gibbs wanted the search done and you can't rush a search. All you can do is give it every available computer and the best possible program, which was already done.

When you can't rush science, when you can't even refine your search, what you can do is go for lunch. Abby headed to Wally's because Tuesday was cajun turkey day, and Wally's father was from New Orleans and knew his way around a turkey.

She picked up a fresh Caf-Pow on the way back and when she got to the Yard and started across her lot she saw him, sitting on the concrete steps outside her door. Gray watched her approach, past the cars and across the sidewalk, down the alley between the buildings. When she stopped in front of him he looked up at her, and for a weird few seconds they didn't say anything.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"You're in trouble."

He grinned, a little. "What else is new?"

Abby grinned a little back, and sat down in a narrow patch of sun next to him. "Those stitches look kinda new," she said, nodding toward his hand.

He didn't say anything, but it wasn't like a bad silence. They sat in a sliver of sun that reached down just to them, tucked away in a corner that was quiet, almost warm, and watched the world at the end of the alley go by. When the sun slipped past the narrow lip of the building, Abby set her drink down and tucked her fingers into the sleeves of her coat, out of the raw spring air.

"Coming in?"

He glanced at her, and away again. And didn't say anything.

"What's to think about?"

Another little grin.

Abby grinned too, triumphant - brilliant - because the rest of the team said he was mysterious, but she was pretty sure she had him pegged.

"How's the - " he made the smallest movement of his hand.

"Mm?" Abby touched her neck, shook her head. "Totally fine. I told you before, I was kind of surprised, and sometimes I yell. Yelp. When I'm surprised, you know. Unexpectedly. It's totally fine."

"Good."

He looked away, back down the alley again, but Abby kept looking at him. She'd picked up a little bit over the years, from Gibbs. ESP-wise. Sometimes, if you just kept looking . . .

He was looking too now . . . looking . . . looking.

"What are we doing?" he said.

"I'm giving you the Gibbs-stare," she said, picking up her drink without breaking eye contact, "until I know all the answers."

He nodded. "Sounds good."

"I don't have the technique perfected yet."

"Me neither."

"I think it's kind of a long course of study." Abby took a pull through the straw, remembered the medical report the other night said he was dehydrated, and wiggled the cup. He was only confused for half a second, and then he shook his head. Abby grinned, impressed. He was quick, kept up the pace. Wasn't everyday you met somebody who kept up. "If that's what you're waiting for you're in for a loooooooong wait," she said.

"Waiting for?"

"Your diploma in Gibbs."

He smiled, kind of sheepish. Kind of tense.

"He freaks out all his agents at first. With the knowing everything and the - " she dropped her voice, assumed the growl - "you belong to me now, McGee. Timmy was so freaked he didn't make a peep in front of Gibbs for three months. Hard to do when you're both on Gibbs' team and not getting fired."

"Timmy?"

"Pre-backbone McGee. Tony and Ziva, they still freak out, sometimes. Because, you know, trust issues, hello. But most of the time they just sort of make an exception for Gibbs. Have you ever done a trust fall?"

He shrugged.

"Yeah, not my favorite. See, Gibbs would never make you do that. But he catches you when it's real. And then he lets you go, you know." She nodded. That was an important part. Gibbs didn't catch you like a cage.

"Not always."

She waited, puzzled.

"What about - when - " he moved his hand.

Oh. "South of the Border Gibbs?"

He smiled, soft. "Yeah."

She grinned too. She hadn't been sure about today this morning, had a funny feeling. But maybe things were looking up. "That's what Tony's for, and the rest of the team too. Sometimes El Jefe needs catching himself, you know?"

He practiced his Gibbs stare on her.

"Seriously. The bigger they are the harder they fall? In relation to Gibbs this is verified fact. Well, you know, you were there in Colombia. Talk about a free fall. It's worrying to the point of insanity, like if vertigo could make you crazy? They don't really believe anybody's going to catch them but then they jump anyway and sometimes it's all - HEY!"

He jumped.

Her head was already buried in her massive purse-bag, but she saw it. "Sorry!" Muffled. "I just - I have them, but where did I - here!" She pulled out four black envelopes with a flourish, like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, and thrust them at him.

Gray took them gingerly.

She clasped her arms around her knees and gripped her own hands, excited. He flipped through them slowly. Every one had his name across the front, etched out in silver ink. Tim's neat and tiny print. Tony big and messy. Ziva's efficient, pretty in a clean, balanced way. Abby had spelled his name out in a spider web.

He held it up. "Like Charlotte."

"You have been my friend," she said solemnly. "That in itself is a tremendous thing."

He looked at her for a long moment then, and it wasn't a Gibbs stare, or any other look she recognized. It was a Gray stare. And Abby had just met him, but she still knew what it meant.

"No ordinary spider," he said.

Abby shoved away weird nonsensical tears. "Exactly." She chewed a hangnail, waiting for him to hurry up and open them. He wasn't, though. He was just looking at them. "Open 'em!"

"Sorry. Don't . . . get a lot of mail." He turned the top envelope around, and then around again, like he was studying the construction, looking for the door. He used his good hand to draw a switchblade the size of a thumb from the pocket of his pants, finally, and slit the tops of all four.

He read Abby's and then Tony's and then Ziva's and then Tim's. And then Abby's again.

And then he cataloged. "Two thank-yous, a thank-you and an apology, and one straight-up apology."

She sat up, indignent. "What do you mean, three thank-yous? Who didn't thank you? I gave them a script!"

He held up a card.

"McGee!" She plucked it out of the air, read it, rolled her eyes. "He quotes regs when he's drunk. And feeling guilty."

"How romantic."

"Right?" She handed the envelope back to him. "I will break him of that, though, eventually. And there'll be punishment for the no thank-you, too."

He leaned back, stretching slightly, slowly, to rest his elbows on the concrete step behind them. "Some guys have all the luck."

She grinned, looked down at a the black-knit tights stretching over her kneecaps, and picked at a loose thread. "You're um . . . really good at apologies. Right to the point. Clearly haven't spent a lot of time around Gibbs. Yet." She peeked at him. "But, with McGee and me, the apology part, that was . . . well, I want to say it was right. I mean, we were wrong. We should have told you what it was, the isotope. Before we made you drink it."

"As apologies go," he said. "That does kind of suck."

"This one's good, though." She plucked back the card dangling from his hand, read her own tiny spiky print aloud. "It wasn't right to irradiate you without telling you first. Vance says that might have put you in danger, if someone else tracked you, but I think it was totally safe and he just doesn't understand the science. It would be really bizarre for the bad guys to figure this one out. But that doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't be sneaky with your own team, and you were on our team, but we didn't treat you like you were. And it's not an excuse, but I just wanted to say that I turned you into a pale blue dot because 'home, and everyone I love, everyone I know rested on you.' But it was still wrong. 'Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by a point of pale light.'"

She looked at him, and he looked at her, and then he looked out at the parking lot.

"That doesn't make any sense," he said. "But I forgive you anyway."

"You've never seen _Cosmos_?" she gasped.

He shook his head.

"Yes!" She flung her fists into the air and he ducked, slightly. "Sorry! But - movie night!" She dropped her voice again. "'We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.' We should get Vance to give us MTAC for it, if you're allowed in there, that would be beyond awesome. Come on. Will those fit in your pockets? Here," she slipped the cards out of his hand, "I'll hold on to these for you, okay?" She reached for his good hand. "Is this okay?" He let her lever him up, and she did it expertly, avoiding stress on his shoulder, on his body. "How are your ribs? Do you have a fever?" She let go of his hand right away and pointed at him, no nonsense. "You left your meds at Gibbs' last night. Not cool."

Abby spun toward the door, paused. "Damn. You have to go through the front," she said. "Security."

"You go in here."

"I have a security clearance. And weird hours." She gestured, a vague body sweep. "And I break the metal detectors."

"Me too."

"Weird hours?"

"All three." He pulled open the door. "After you."

"You took my key!" Outraged, and maybe slightly impressed, she reached for the zipper pocket where her key . . . still was. "You didn't take my key," she said slowly. "How'd you open the door?"

He looked at the door, like he was studying a problem. "I think the main principle is force from mass times acceleration. But you tell me."

She rolled her eyes and stepped through. "Smart ass."

**x**

When they got up to the bullpen Abby stopped. "Um - "

"See you later," Gray said.

"Right. Just don't forget, it's an advanced degree, okay? But totally worth it. Eventually."

"Got it."

"Um - and can I just?" She leaned in. "I wanted to say I'm sorry. For your mom. Okay?" Her arms went up, and he didn't move, so she hugged him for a good two seconds.

He patted her back with his good arm and stepped away. "Later."

"Later." Abby waved. "Good luck."

The team were at their desks, Tim filling them in on what he'd found out from a Pentagon liasion about arms smuggling - and smugglers - out of Accra. Gibbs held up a hand, looking to Tim's left, and Tim glanced up to see Gray standing next to his desk. Tim jumped, making his desk rattle, and then he blushed.

Gray looked at him. "Sorry."

Tim opened his mouth, but Gibbs beat him to it. "Get over here," he said, voice quiet.

The whole bullpen felt quiet, then, but Gray strolled forward like he didn't notice.

"The one thing you had going for you," Gibbs said. "Was you were honest."

Gray's turn to wait, and get nothing.

"So?" he said finally.

Gibbs leaned back, relaxed. Resolved. "So I don't work with liars. Or cowards. You can go on home, now. Or wherever it is you go, when you're too afraid to go home."

Gray leaned forward to pull a pencil out of Gibbs' pencil holder. "You don't work with liars. But you'll work with Kort."

"Kort is a CIA agent, I have to work with him. You're a punk."

Gray pulled a blue post-it from a square of them. "Never said I wasn't," he said, writing.

"What you said was that you would give me a way to contact you. You lied."

Gray didn't reply. But he leaned in again, letting the post-it fall on the Accra assessments stacked in front of Gibbs.

Gibbs glanced at the paper, pulled out his reading glasses and his phone, and punched in the number written there, staring at Gray all the while. "I don't hear ringing."

Gray pulled a sleek black device from a pocket, held it up. "I said I would check messages, not that I would answer." He looked at the face of it. "One missed call."

"You check for my messages every six hours, minimum."

"Pushy."

"Minimum."

"I'll think about it. Why are you looking at Accra? Thought his last known whereabouts were Union Station."

"Search parameters for Barbi alone are too wide. We're looking to identify his team." Gibbs leaned over, opened a drawer, and pulled out two prescription pill bottles. "You take whatever meds Ducky says you take."

Gray smiled, reaching for the bottles. "My last job came with candy, too."

Gibbs glared, but reached silently for the lockbox, removing the key to the war room. "Follow me. You three, I want IDs on that team," Gibbs said to the room. He moved past Tony's desk toward the stairs, putting his phone up to his ear. "Make it happen."

Gray paused by Tony's desk. "Cranky."

"Yeah," Tony hissed. "That's No Sleep Gibbs. Thanks a lot."

Gibbs had reached the stairs and was closing his phone. "Hey!" he barked.

Tony shooed him away. "Scram, will ya? Before he comes back and goes Kill Bill."

Gray nodded to Ziva, who waved back, and disappeared with Gibbs up the stairs.

**x**

Gray followed Gibbs into the room and took in the table cluttered with laptops and paper.

"Kort?"

"Downstairs, interviewing." Gibbs reached into a pallet on the floor and set a bottle of water in the middle of the table. Then he pulled a file box from the windowsill. "Hanlan," he said, pointing to the front. He flipped the tab about midway through the box forward and pointed at the files there. "The other two." He set a chair in front of the box and placed a blank yellow legal pad on top of it. "I want discrepancies. Inaccuracies. Lies."

"What's going on with Barbi?"

Gibbs grabbed a pen sitting in the middle of the table and placed it on top of the notepad. He thought about countering by asking where Gray had been all night. He wondered if he'd got any sleep. If he'd been out in the cold, in a sweatshirt, all that time.

But he wasn't the kid's father.

"No sign of him. Cassie suggested we monitor the neighborhood where you were living when O'Donnell found you. She gave us your old address. He hasn't turned up there yet, but he will."

Gray nodded, sitting in front of the file box. Gibbs leaned against a wall and crossed his arms.

Gray pulled a stack of notes from the front of the box and scanned the first page. "You going to stand there all day?"

"No."

Gray was on the fourth page when there was a tap at the door.

"That's your guard. He'll stay outside as long as you're in this room and keep you in sight at all times everywhere else, wherever you are, as long as you're on the Yard. Lose him and you'll never get inside the gate again. Clear?"

Gray nodded, and Gibbs left.

Gibbs was back two hours later. "Come with me," he said.

Gray put down his pen, stood, followed him out silently. The guard trailed them to MTAC. Gibbs ushered Gray in and strode forward. "Where is he?"

A tech straightened up from the console in the front. "Traffic cam had Barb on Jefferson Street in Old Town two minutes ago. He's drifting closer to Rosemont."

Gibbs nodded. "I want my agents on open lines." He gestured to the screen. "Put a map up, I want Barb and their locations, and the house. And I want their hood cams."

"Yes sir."

Tony's voice broke through a moment later. "Here Boss."

"Step on it, Dinozzo, he's on King Street, heading toward Rosemont."

"On it."

Another two minutes, and Kort's voice came through. "Where is he?"

"King Street, heading west." Gibbs eyes moved over the map. "Correction, he's heading north on Commonwealth. I want that cam!" A traffic cam blinked into view under the map. Gibbs pointed at a tech without looking at her. "You follow him, Sarah. Dinozzo, head to the house, Kort's closing in on Barb's vehicle."

"We read you Gibbs," Ziva said. "Heading to Circle Hill Road now. Five minutes out."

"House is empty," Gray said.

"Yeah," Gibbs acknowledged. "But Barb doesn't know that. If we can get his entire team in there we can end this now."

They watched for four minutes in silence.

"There'll be a second car," Gray said. "Maybe a third."

"You got that, Dinozzo?" Gibbs said.

"Got it. Turning on Circle Hill now."

"I want a grid, house is your focus."

"On it."

Gibbs scanned the screens. "Got some cars on the street, people. Second and third teams could be on foot."

The agency cars and Barb converged around the Circle Lane block. It was a pretty tree-lined street, one Gray and who knew how many kids had called home before O'Donnell turned up and it all went to hell.

Gray's phone buzzed softly and he answered, just as soft.

Tony's car crept down Circle Lane. "Movement in the house!" Ziva called. " . . . A woman. Dark hair."

"Get in there," Gibbs ordered. "Dinozzo and Ziva take the front. Kort and McGee, enter from the back, access from Tompsen Lane. I want position confirmation."

"Two minutes," Kort said, terse. And a moment later, "We're on foot."

"I have to go," Gray said.

Gibbs turned, incredulous. "What?"

"Truck has a tail." Gray was already running for the door.

But Truck and the others were in a separate safe house, had to be miles away - were the houses blown then? All of them? A simultaneous tail - could be a coordinated attack. Could be a distraction.

"Gray! Where?"

"Uptown." He was out the door.

Gibbs didn't think about it. He just followed him up the ramp.

"Sarah, I want link up from my car," he shouted back. "Dinozzo, we've got contact in DC, you've got the lead." Gibbs burst out of MTAC and spotted Gray's guard disappearing into the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall. "Darren!"

"Front entrance," Darren yelled.

"Hold him off. I'll get the car."

Gibbs grabbed the keys from his desk and headed for the lot. Three minutes and he was roaring through the front circle. He spotted Darren pacing Gray to the side of the main entrance and pulled up, tires squealing. Gray leapt into the front seat.

"You too," Gibbs called, and Darren piled into the back.

"Darren, get me MTAC on speaker." Gibbs peeled out of the Navy Yard. "Where uptown?"

"Park View," Gray muttered.

Gibbs shook his head.

"MTAC's on, Gibbs."

"Sarah?"

"Here."

Gibbs swerved around late afternoon traffic, punching the Charger through gaps in the snarl of cars and buses. "Patch me through to Dinozzo."

"Yes sir."

They waited in silence for Tony, the engine and the horns a cacophony all around them. But from Darren's phone there was only static.

"Dinozzo, you there?"

Static.

"Ziva! You read me?"

Static.

How much time had passed? Six minutes, maybe more. Whatever had happened in that house should be over by now.

"Sarah."

"Yes Gibbs."

"You have anything on the screen?"

"No sir, everything looks normal."

"Get me Kort."

"Yes sir."

Static.

"Kort?"

Static.

"McGee!"

Nothing.

Gibbs flipped the car's lights and let the siren blare, gunning up Capital Street. "Sarah."

"Here."

"Keep trying my team, get back to me when they're online."

"Yes sir. Sir? Should I call for backup to that location?"

Gibbs frowned at the street in front of him, traffic hemming him in.

"Sir?"

"No," Gibbs said. "You keep calling my team, and you get back to me the second you got them. We clear?"

"Yes sir."

Darren shut the phone.

Gibbs glanced over at Gray. He had his cast braced against the door and the other arm tight against his ribs. Gibbs wondered what he weighed, and pictured a hard brake sending him right through the windshield.

"Put your seatbelt on. This look like Barb's team?"

Gray fumbled with the belt, one-handed, and Darren leaned forward to secure it. Darren wasn't the sort who would fit through a windshield.

"Truck said it looked like a gang," Gray said.

"Colombian?"

"Local. Followed him this morning. He flashed his gun, they took off. Now they're back."

"You have trouble with local gangs before?"

"No."

Gray sounded as confused as Gibbs felt.

"How many?"

"Two cars, they tried to funnel him."

"How many with Truck?"

"Three."

"Armed?"

"Two are, plus Truck."

One unarmed? Too young, that meant.

Fuck it.

"Darren," Gibbs called back. "I want two teams in Park View, yesterday."

"Got it." Darren made the call.

Gray was on his phone again. "Forcing him south, down 8th."

"Make that Shaw, Darren," Gibbs said. They were east of the Mall now, coasting through quieter neighborhoods, traffic clearing.

"Third car. Driving him west, toward 9th," Gray said.

A lane opened to the left and the car rocked heavily as Gibbs swerved into it.

Two cars. Now a third car?

"Ambush," Gibbs said. "Soon."

Gray nodded. "Andy, speaker," he said into the phone. A moment later - "Truck, don't think we're gonna make it . . . Six, seven minutes . . . Yeah. Good. Do it."

Gray fell silent.

"What's the plan?"

"Too many closing in," Gray said. "Truck'll try to lose them. They'll abandon the car where they can barricade, and wait for us."

Gibbs grit his teeth and forced the Charger faster. Abandoning the car was a huge risk. But getting trapped in it would be worse.

"West on Barry," Gray said. And a moment later, "South on 10th."

Gibbs cut over to 11th, car edging toward two wheels whipping around the corner. They were close now. Blocks flew by in a grey blur.

"Shots," Gray said, monotone. The phone pressed to his ear. "Automatic . . . two shooters. East on P." Gray paused as Gibbs mirrored the move on H, crowding back a shocked delivery guy on a bike. "South. South on 9th. . . . Yeah, we'll come in the front. Two minutes." Gray shut the phone and dropped it into his pocket, reaching around to pull a semi-automatic from the holster at his back. "Vacant lots south of M on 9th," he said. "Abandoned building, west side of the street. They've ditched the car."

"Time?" Gibbs said.

"Maybe a minute."

Gibbs was still six blocks south, skidding north onto 9th. He glanced at the man sitting silently in the back seat, braced against the door behind Gray. "Darren."

"Yeah."

"You cover Gray."

"Got it."

"And don't get shot."

"No, sir."

"Four friendly inside," Gray added.

"Four friendly, got it," Darren said.

They rocketed up 9th, slowed to crawl through an intersection, forced to weave around cars paralyzed by the siren.

"Too slow," Gray said.

Gibbs said nothing, laying on the horn, bulling his way past two idiots in minivans, finally launching forward again. Two blocks up Gray pointed. "There."

It would have been hard to miss. Four shiny black SUVs grouped around a hulking, four-story brick. It was a burned out shell, a weedy gravel lot. Gunfire even through the siren as they pulled up, skidding across the gravel, leaping from the car. They ran for the front center door, rotting porch wood soft under their feet. Gibbs nodded and he and Darren stepped through the entry together, before Gray could beat them to it.

They surprised two tattooed men, guns dangling. Darren might have said something. Gibbs cut them down, one each to the chest, and moved forward. The front room was small. A third man appeared in the door to the left of them, gun raised. Darren fired. The man was knocked back, a neat hole in the center of his forehead. Gibbs shifted toward that door, Darren moving alongside.

There were two bodies just inside the door, bloody wounds center mass. They looked too old to be any of Gray's. Gibbs glanced quickly through into the room beyond. It was empty, long, high ceilinged. A blackened staircase running up the side. Heavy automatic fire coming from a doorway to the left, large caliber rounds chewing up the plaster wall on the far side of the room. Pistol fire, sporadic, returned from the top of the stairs and a door farther down on the right.

A weird pause, sudden silence from one of the heavy guns, and a shriek from the near door on the left. The kids had hit one. A barrage of pistol fire instantly centered around the door, but the gun returned after a second. Another shooter.

Gibbs glanced behind him.

Gray was gone.

He grabbed Darren's arm and gestured behind him. "Cover Gray!" he yelled. The words were swallowed by the fight, but Darren looked where Gray ought to be, and back to Gibbs, eyes wide.

"Flank!" Gibbs gestured to the left side of the house, and Darren took off.

Gibbs concentrated his fire where the shooter hiding behind the plaster wall closest to him must have been. He had no angle, but plenty of ammunition, and he set methodically to punching holes in the wall. Seemed to take ten clustered in the same spot to punch through. He put in three in less than twenty seconds, and the third one was the charm. The fire from the door farther down cut out almost at the same time.

"Hold your fire!" Gibbs yelled. "This is Gibbs! Hold your fire!"

Quiet.

"Gray, Darren, you clear?"

"We're clear," Darren called back.

A voice from the right, muffled, sounded like Tomas.

Gray stepped through the far door and Andy flew down the steps, trailed by a boy about her age. She and Gray disappeared through the second door and the rest of them followed.

Tomas was just inside, kneeling in a lake of blood. He was hunched over, his back to them, and Gibbs' first thought was that he'd been hit, gut shot. But then Gibbs moved farther into the room and saw that he was hovering over a smaller boy. The boy had more holes in him than Truck had hands. Pools of blood welled up from his chest, rushed up from his stomach. It spilled over his sweatshirt, spreading over the dirty floor.

Gray was beside him instantly, hands over the blood covering the boy's belly, turning his jeans black. Andy slid to her knees by his head, looking at his chest, taking in the destruction of his body, and then she turned away from it deliberately, touching his face.

"Bean," she whispered. She stroked his hair. "Hey Beans, you're okay, berraco. Bacan boy." His hands jerked, knocked hard into the floor, and she caught one. "I got you." He looked at her, panting, terrified. He tried to speak, but nothing came. "Shh," she leaned down, murmuring. "Mi corazon, carnalito, todos bien, okay, it's okay. We got you, I got you."

His free hand scrabbled against Tomas' thigh, fingers stretching. The room held its breath as his eyes drifted away and his body stilled.

A brief, terrible silence, all of them waiting to be sure. And then Gray said something, low, to Tomas, and the older boy stood, brushing past Gibbs. Gray followed, and Gibbs moved to be able to keep him in sight. But he was reluctant to leave the room, or the girl sitting still by the body of the boy.

Tomas ran out of the house, headed for the cars, but Gray stopped at the first body by the door. The man lay face down. Gray hauled him over, patted him down, shoved up a sleeve. Calligraphy covered his forearm.

Gray turned to the next body, starting the process again.

"Darren," Gibbs said.

"Yeah."

"I want our teams at either end of this block, intercepting local law enforcement. No one in or out, for as long as they can hold them."

"Got it."

Gibbs nodded at the bodies. "And check the rest of them."

Darren already had his phone up to his ear. "Looking for anything in particular?"

"Gang tats. That one's MS-13," Gibbs waved at the first body, sleeve still shoved up where Gray had left it, tattoo exposed.

Darren disappeared into the far room and Tomas reappeared, carrying a blanket and a plastic jug of gasoline. Gray stood, walking with Tomas back to the boy's body, to the girl sitting with him, still holding his hand, and the fourth kid crouched silent next to her.

Tomas carried out Bean's body, bundled in a bloody quilt, and placed him in the SUV. Tomas and Andy and the silent boy climbed into the car, and in seconds were speeding out of the gravel lot, heading north.

Gibbs poured the gasoline.

In the far room Darren pulled up the shirt of the last gunman. "MS-13," he said, and got out of the way as Gibbs doused the body and the floor around it, setting the tank down.

"Let's go," Gibbs said. Gray and Darren made for the car. Gibbs tossed the match, and joined them.

* * *

 

_Colombian Spanish slang in this chapter (definitions according to the Internet):_

_berraco: tough guy_

_bacan: cool_

_Todos bien: It's all good_

_Mi corazon: My heart_

_carnalito: little brother_

* * *

 

_a/n: Quotes:_

_From Charlotte's Web, E.B. White:_

_"Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.'_  
_"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing."_

_. . ._

_"But we have received a sign, Edith - a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm... in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'... we have no ordinary pig."_

_"Well", said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider."_

_. . ._

_Abby also quotes Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan, a cool video you can Youtube:_

_"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. . . . Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."_

_And again from Mr. Sagan's film Cosmos:_

_"Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."_


	36. Numbers

On first sight Gray's house, the whole neighborhood, reminded Tony of his boarding school days.

The lawns were immaculate and the houses were elegant, gorgeous old clapboards and tasteful weathered brick, soaring trees lining driveways like valets. Gray's place was a rambling white colonial set well back from the street, shielded from view, just like its neighbors, on a big woodsy lot.

They abandoned the car by the curb and drew their guns, running over thick green grass, easing up porch steps to flank the door.

Ziva looked at him, a silent question, and Tony nodded. She eased her thumb over the latch, pressed gently. The heavy oak shifted a hairsbreadth and stopped. Locked.

She had her picks out a moment later, finessing the pins on the deadbolt. Another moment, a delicate shift in the mechanism of the lock, and she eased her hands away, drew her weapon once again.

He tilted his head at the door - she'd been the one to spot movement - and Ziva gestured to the left. She was leaning forward, focused and fierce, like a sprinter at the start.

"McGee," Tony whispered.

Ten seconds . . . fifteen . . . thirty . . . a minute.

"McGee," he tried again.

Minute fifteen . . . minute thirty . . .

Tony adjusted his stance. If Kort and McGee had run into trouble -

Ziva glanced behind them and then to Tony, back to the door and to Tony again, uneasy.

No Gibbs on the comm. No backup. And now silence from McGee. Tony fought down the hinky feeling clawing up his spine.

They held themselves still, straining to hear movement inside. But Tony only heard the faint purr and fade of a car making its way down the street. He looked back, scanned the trees, saw nothing but a calm, sunny spring day.

Another minute and they would have to scout around -

And then it came.

"Position," McGee whispered.

And Tony said, "Go."

**x**

McGee and Kort were supposed to walk from one backyard to another. But there were kids playing basketball in the driveway of the house directly behind Gray's. A man trimming hedges in the one next to that. They ditched the car three houses down, cut through to the backyard and then doubled back, jogging along a wild swath of trees and brush that separated the properties.

In summer it would have been good cover. But there weren't any leaves on the trees now, only dead ones that cracked and slipped underfoot, and twigs that dragged against their clothes, snapping and scraping, ridiculously loud. They were running, breath rasping by the time McGee first glimpsed Gray's house through the branches. It was a classic, pretty colonial from the front, but the back was expanded, modern, fitted with a wall of glass.

If the hit squad was good, if anyone in that house had the sense to keep watch, they'd already been spotted. And Gibbs said they were good. The hit team, or the death squad, or whatever they were called. Gibbs said that Gray said they were good.

McGee concentrated on not falling, not slowing down. He scanned the back of the house for movement, hyper aware of every tree he passed, every swell in the ground under his feet, every possible cover.

If the squad was really good there wouldn't be any movement. Wouldn't be a chance for cover. There would just be running, and then nothing. Running, and game over - close now -

They broke through the trees and onto grass, totally exposed, moving hard over the lush green carpet. Slowed to cross a stone patio that led up to plate glass windows and a screened sliding door. Pressed themselves, finally, against the wood frame.

They weren't taking fire. They hadn't been spotted.

Or maybe they had been spotted, and the squad was waiting for them inside.

They paused to breathe, not nearly enough to recover, too long if the squad had seen them approach.

Kort peeked around the edge of the door, scanning whatever was visible through the glass. He gave it a nudge and it whispered back on its track. Turned and nodded to McGee.

"In position," McGee whispered.

Tony gave the go.

Kort pushed the door open. Stepped through. It was a big open space and Kort went in straight.

Gibbs never goes straight, McGee thought, moving through the door. Not unless there were three of them, all at once—one straight, one left, one right -

But he wasn't with his team. No Gibbs, no Tony Ziva Kate -

The sharp feeling clawing at Tim's gut wasn't new. But it was sharper now than it had ever been before, prickling through his body like a cold fire. It took his breath. He stepped farther into the house, tile under his feet, and went left. Kort on one side, outer wall of the house on the other, sweeping the difference in a zig-zag, shoulder to floor, shoulder to ceiling. Not so fast you'll miss not so slow they'll get you. Tiles and fan and lighting and a gleaming steel fridge, counter – island –

McGee held his breath, adjusted the angle of his weapon, stepped swiftly around - nothing there.

He moved hurriedly on. Kort was faster than Gibbs had ever been.

It was dark in the next room, no light, no windows, and their breathing was loud. McGee held it, held against the ice screaming up his throat. They swept silent through a dining area, flowed around the table –

Gibbs' voice erupted in his ear, an impossible roar, and McGee reached swiftly to his earpiece, muting the volume.

They moved past open doors, no more than a glance - exposed now, should cover their six - but Kort only pushed forward, faster, silent over pile carpet -

And then a crack beneath him. McGee's own weight over a hardwood floor, like thunder.

Kort stilled, listening. Silence. 

Then he was moving again, and McGee was following. Four rooms, a hallway, five rooms. Ziva and Tony would be in the next.

Another hall, a sixth room, had to be the next.

McGee jerked to the right. Looked up. Overhead, something muffled -

Movement -

A voice above them.

Kort halted, held up a hand, and McGee froze. Kort pointed, up and to the right, and then he was stalking right, through a door. How could he move that fast and clear too, he couldn't -

McGee followed across a hall, ceiling-floor sweep, and Kort was already half-way up a thin staircase. Too thin, single file, fish in a barrel thin–

McGee stopped at the base, swept the hall again, shoulder-floor –

Another voice above them. Two voices. Footsteps on a wood floor. A thud, something driven into a wall. A cry.

And then again, thud-cry.

Kort was almost to the top, McGee was half-way up, and Kort paused, covered McGee up the stairs, and then they were moving forward again and the hallway was wider here, lighter, sun streaming through skylights. They came to doorways, a glance into open rooms, no movement, bright colors - messy beds - empty -

They moved shoulder to shoulder down the wide hallway. Low voices clearer now, muttering, and the high voice in distress, and McGee's fear was a roar, a wave crashing all around. And then it was gone. Everything was sharp and everything was far away. The ice in his gut turned hot, and they weren't moving fast enough.

The hallway opened out in front of them, a landing. Kort slowed, looked at McGee, and his eyes were pale, unbelievably calm. He tilted his head, left-right, and McGee nodded, and then they were moving again, faster -

Tim stepped to the edge of the wall concealing him, saw two guns.

He fired at the first, stepped past the wall, spotted two more, fired at the second. Moved left, firing, and finally the second fell and the third was shooting, close, McGee was practically on top of him. Kort was firing to his right, and beyond that was returning fire.

Something flew into his face. He was blind, and he ducked down, shook his head, blinked. Blasts from behind him now, glass shattering next to him, an unarmed woman cowering in front of him. He ran forward, pulled her to the left, to the hallway there, and Ziva and Tony were running down it, Ziva yelling, and he pushed the woman to the right, against the wall out of the way, but the plaster next to her erupted, shards and dust. He turned and raised his gun and something lifted him up, flung him to the wall. He slammed into the woman, stumbled, fell right on top of her. 

She was soft. He had to get off her, he was too heavy. But he couldn't move. He was too heavy.

He was panting and he had to stop, they would hear him. But he couldn't stop. Someone had taken all the air.

"McGee!"

Tony was shouting.

"No, a scratch – there isn't – ring a vest? . . . need to . . . you? No!"

Shouting at Kort now.

Good luck with that, McGee thought. Kort was insane. Shouting didn't work on insane people. The woman was gone and McGee missed her. She'd been warm, and now he was cold.

They weren't firing anymore. Tony and Ziva were hovering, arguing like always.

That meant they'd won.

"McGee?" Ziva was touching his face.

"Hey," he said. "We won."

"Yes," Ziva smiled. "We did."

"That lady okay?"

"She is fine."

Something was crushing him, burning him. It was bad.

"Ziva . . . I get hit?"

"Yes."

That didn't make sense. He tried to tell her, but he couldn't breathe. He needed his inhaler.

He tried to get up, but they held him down.

**x**

The house was already pouring smoke. Gibbs spun the car out of the lot and wove around the barricade at the end of the street, signaling to the men there to pack it in.

"South," Gray said. "Left on N."

Gibbs veered south, merging into early evening traffic, putting distance between them and the fire. His phone was buzzing, rattling like an angry hornet around the cupholder where he'd thrown it earlier. He reached down to silence it. "Where am I headed?"

Gray twisted in his seat, scanning the road behind them, checking for a tail. Darren did the same.

"Drop off in Ivy City." Gray sat forward again. "Five miles out. There," he pointed. A familiar black SUV sat idling in the empty end of a bank parking lot, waiting for them to drive by. "Follow him."

Gibbs slowed, gave Tomas time to slip back into traffic, to weave around Gibbs' car.

"Gray. Hey," Gibbs paused, made sure he was listening. "Let them take him to Ducky."

Gray ignored him.

"If you bring the body in to Ducky we can use the ballistics," Gibbs tried again. "The major gang players are in the system. We can track them down."

Gray shook his head. They drove in silence for a minute, making their way south, then west, following the SUV into a golden sunset. Gibbs was about to start in again when Darren leaned forward. "Got a call from MTAC for you, Gibbs."

"Yeah," Gibbs said, and Darren held up a phone. "Who am I talking to?"

"Agent Gibbs, this is Sarah - "

"Where's my team?"

"McGee was wounded at the house. David and Dinozzo are on their way with him to Washington Central. Kort suggests you meet them there."

Wounded. "Shot?"

"I'm sorry sir, I don't - wait . . ." Voices in the background. She was on with Kort. "Yes, sir."

Gibbs scanned the road in front of him. Washington Central was east. Getting farther away.

"Condition?"

"I'm sorry sir, I don't know. I believe they're still enroute."

"What's the status at the house?"

"Barbi is dead. We have eight bodies total, no IDs yet on the rest."

Gibbs was silent, and Darren pulled the phone away.

"Wait." The phone came back. "Sarah, I want you with Kort at the house. It looks like some faction of MS-13 is hunting the kids, maybe a local cell hired by Barbi. If any of his team is still out there we need them alive. Check the bodies at the house, look for a gang connection. Anything we can use to track down the rest of them."

"Yes sir."

Darren spoke to Sarah briefly while Gibbs followed Tomas through a quiet warehouse district, and finally into a decrepit parking garage, one with hardly any cars. They blasted up three levels, making their way to a dim corner at the back of a deserted concrete deck. There was a third car already there. Cassie and another boy got out, walking toward them, and Tomas and Andy were climbing out of the SUV. Gray popped his door before Gibbs even stopped the car, already sliding out.

Gibbs turned to Darren. "Watch the perimeter."

"Got it. Hey Gibbs - " He passed his phone forward, the glowing screen a close up of a dead man's face. "Got pictures of most of them."

Gibbs took it and jogged after Gray.

They came together in a circle between the cars, standing silent for a long moment.

Gibbs held out the phone.

Tomas stepped forward, manipulating the images with fingers still tacky with blood. "Saw two of them this morning," he said after a moment. "Thought they were going to jump me. And then they were following me when I got out of class. Never seen the rest before."

He passed the phone to the boy next to him.

"What about everybody else?" Gibbs pressed. "Anybody else have contact?"

"No," Cassie said. "None of the houses are blown. They only found Truck. Only today."

Tomas shook his head. "Went to class and practice, like always. Picked up the kids like always. Same routine, different routes. Only saw those two this morning - "

"They spot you on the street first?" Cassie interrupted.

"Yeah."

A pause.

"So it was not the car. They recognized you," she said, slow. "How did they do that."

"You been at the Navy Yard every day this week," Gray said. Cassie and Tomas looked up. "Diablo knew I was there. Barbi buys someone there - "

"And they follow us out of the Yard?" Tomas said. "Followed me all yesterday, and then this morning to class? No way."

"It's not impossible to follow you," Gray said. "Barb's crew is good."

"Followed us home," Cassie said, "and then waited? Why? Followed him out this morning, but approached on foot, on some random street? Why? Why only him? Why not me? Why back off this morning, and come back in the afternoon?" She shook her head. "No. Plus those guys are not Barb's crew. Thugs, street boys - they didn't get us from the Yard."

Silence.

Gibbs took a breath. "If we take Bean's body into NCIS we can use ballistics, track their weapons. ID those guys," he gestured to the phone. "Look into the money flow, follow it - "

"Take weeks," Gray said, impatient. "Months."

Another pause, considering.

Cassie tilted her head, thinking aloud. "Barb's pay could be anything anyway. Maybe money. Maybe product, guns - another hit somewhere, anywhere. Could take years to track it, if you ever did."

The others nodded agreement.

"Well what do you suggest?" Gibbs said.

"Figure it out," Cassie replied. "Barbi has a team in town. He contracts with local 13. Two of them spot Truck. He warns them off. They wait, get some friends, chase him down."

"Yeah. But how they know me?" Tomas said. "And then two of his people just get lucky and spot me?"

"Maybe it's not Barbi - "

"It's him." Gray said.

"But how do they know me - "

"Gibbs' team has pictures of us," Gray said. "From before. Surveillance from Colombia. Goes back years."

Silence, like after a bomb.

"My team is secure," Gibbs said steadily.

Silence. And awareness, in Gibbs' mind. Darren standing by the car, eyes on the perimeter, turned away from them. Every single one of these kids carrying. Guns at their backs, at their ankles -

"But who had them before you?" Cassie said slowly.

"CIA. Colombian Intelligence," Gray spat. "Who cares? If Gibbs could dig it up Diablo could do the same. He sees them, buys them, gets the pictures to Barbi. Barbi sends them out to local 13. They see Tomas."

"Just luck," Andy spoke for the first time. "They just see him?"

"Not luck," Cassie said. Her voice was terrible, faint, and Gibbs frowned at her. "Oh shit. Not luck. It's numbers. How many MS-13 here?" She glanced at Gray, at Gibbs. "Gotta be - "

"You think - all of them?" Tomas stared at her. At Gray.

"Said he flew into Philly," Cass shook her head. "If he contracted Philly, DC, Baltimore - that is - "

"Hundreds," Gray said. 

"Barbi runs a squad. He's not that big," the boy next to Cassie broke in. "And Diablo is dead. How's a dead guy pay for that."

They didn't know it was Londono, Gibbs realized. Gray hadn't told them.

"What if it is not Barbi," Cassie said. "Or Diablo. What if it's Londono."

Another bomb, sucking out all the air.

"Looking for Sean," Tomas said into the quiet. He looked at Gray. "He sends Barb's squad. But he got pictures too. Cartel's been pushing into Mexico, working with 13 to sell into the States. The Calera's got to be 13's best supplier down there."

Making millions, thought Gibbs. Tens of millions, easy -

"Wouldn't even have to pay them," Andy said. "He could have every 13 cell looking for us, just to keep his business. He could hire the East Coast."

Silence. And Gray nodded.

"Let us move the kids to safe houses," Gibbs tried.

Cassie dismissed that immediately. "The cells do not know where we are. Londono doesn't either. All they have is our pictures. We need to lay low, not move around. Who could they have?" She turned to Gray, glanced at Gibbs, searching. "They have us all?"

"No," Gray said. "They got me. Cop, Truck, Hook, Jay. Mads, maybe." He looked at Gibbs. "Were there more than what I saw?"

Gibbs shrugged. "You saw everything we have that connected to you. But we didn't pull photos of kids we didn't recognize."

"There could be more," Cassie said.

"Yeah." Gibbs glanced around at the faces in the circle. "But - "

"Truck is the one who looks most the same," Gray said. "The younger ones look different."

"Tomas, Cassie, and Gray are the most recognizable," Gibbs agreed.

The faces relaxed, slightly. Some of them.

"He knows Kort is here, we are here. He's got the connection to the CIA and NCIS," Cassie muttered. "Gibbs gets rescued, Gray's mom gets taken, Diablo disappears. And he sends a squad."

"Sends an army," Andy said.

Cassie nodded, looked from Tomas to Gray. "He is moving on us."

Silence. Expectant, now. Waiting. The others' eyes were on Gray, on Cassie and Tomas.

"Yeah," Tomas said. "Agree."

Gibbs crossed his arms against the chill that ran down his spine. "I can get local PD to crack down. Haul in the ringleaders, that'll disorganize them."

"For seventy-two hours?" Tomas scoffed.

"We can hold them longer than that."

"Only the ones with bad lawyers. And how many of them? Local PD, even Feds, they might give you twenty, fifty guys," Cassie said. "Right?"

Gibbs looked back at her, calculating. If they brought in the boy -

"Even with a dead kid in your morgue," she said, "you get a hundred be lucky, and only for a few days. MS-13 probably has a thousand from Philly to Virginia."

"Who do we have?" Gray asked. "Local?"

"To do what?" Gibbs said. "Mow down a thousand gangbangers?"

"AK," Cassie said immediately.

The others shook their heads. "Already in with the cartel," Tomas said. "We made sure of that."

"Gray," Gibbs said, "Look, any of you - you get hauled in for murder and even the CIA won't be able to get you out."

Silence for a moment.

"That 18th Street guy you pounded," Cassie said. "Back over Christmas."

"The one sold the shit stuff to Diego?" The boy next to her, Gibbs still didn't know who that was. Jay? Mads?

"His brother was high up 18th, wasn't he?" Cassie prodded.

"Yeah," Truck said. "Danny or Dizzy, something like that."

Gray frowned. "Doesn't matter. Dizzy went away."

"Got out," Andy said firmly. "And he calls himself Deuce. Saw him last week, down at that same bar he sold at before."

The others looked at her, and she shrugged. "Told you I'd get him."

Tomas and Cassie were looking at Gray now. Waiting.

"Okay," Gray said quietly. Blood in it. "Let's talk to Deuce."

Gibbs closed his eyes. The 18 Street Gang. Not as big in the Mid-Atlantic as MS-13. But close, and hungry. "Gray - "

"We'll try not to get arrested. You should go see your geek, Gibbs," Gray said. He was already walking away, Cassie and Tomas walking with him. "You can tell him I said hi, if he's still alive."

"Gray!" Gibbs called. "Darren goes with you."

Gray paused and looked back, real surprise on his face. "What?"

Gibbs didn't answer and Gray looked past him, to the man standing by the NCIS sedan, watching them both. Gray shrugged, turned away again.

Darren jogged forward, silent, and got into the car behind Gray.

**x**

He checked the ER first. They gave him a surgeon's name, pointed him to the elevators. He followed signs to the surgical wing, found Ducky sitting in a deserted lobby, talking to a nurse.

"What's the status?"

"Jethro!" Ducky surged to his feet. Faltered as he looked him over. "Are you alright?"

"Status on McGee?"

Ducky's nurse friend excused herself. He watched her go, and then turned back to Gibbs.

"Critical, I'm afraid. The bullet missed his spine but not much else. Surgeons are working to repair an arterial tear and fractured pelvis. He has bone fragmentation through the abdomen, damage to the intestine, right kidney, stomach, that we know of - "

Gibbs must have looked shocked. Ducky broke off, sympathetic. "But blood loss is the most serious concern at the moment."

"He going to make it?"

Ducky pursed his lips. "We had an update half an hour ago that was promising. But he's been in surgery less than two hours at this point. It's too soon to tell."

Gibbs looked away, at the floor, and the heavy swinging doors separating them from the surgical bay. Ducky watched him, patient.

"How long till we know?"

"If he survives the surgery - the next eight hours or so - his chances improve. Why don't you sit down, Jethro?"

Gibbs' eyes swept the empty chairs. "Where's the team?"

"Ziva took Abby to the cafeteria a few moments ago. Tony - " Ducky pointed to a black wall of windows at the far end of the room. The dark was spotted with yellow streetlights, and beyond, the bright dome of the Capitol. Tony was leaning against a silver handrail, looking out at the traffic. He didn't seem to notice Gibbs' approach.

"What happened?"

"Boss." Tony actually turned the other way, looked over his shoulder to scan the lobby. "Where's the kid?"

"What happened, Dinozzo."

Tony looked at him, then. Eyes pleading, dark, all mixed up, like when Jenny died.

Gibbs leaned against the rail next to him.

"Ziva and I went in the front. McGee went in the back, with Kort."

Gibbs nodded.

"Big house. We went in quiet. Cleared most of the front rooms on the first floor, heard movement up on the second floor. Heard a woman crying. We had to double back, to get to the stairs . . ." Tony considered the night in front of him, followed the progress of a man walking along the sidewalk below them. "Guess that's how Kort and McGee got there first. They went up the back stairs. We heard shots, a lot of fire. We went up the front stairs - " He frowned.

"And?"

"Kort and McGee just - went in so fast. Well - " Tony leaned forward against the rail. "Probie, you know - boy scout. And Kort's a lone ranger, so you know how that goes too. Turns out there were five of them up there, questioning this woman. And little Timmy couldn't wait."

"What woman?"

"Name's Maya." Tony shrugged, staring hard at the dark, and then at Gibbs' reflection in the glass. "She's a nanny for the kids."

He hadn't heard anything about a nanny. "You sure?"

"Yeah." Tony scrubbed a dirty hand through his hair. It was stiff with old blood. "Kort knows her. She lives there usually. When Diablo showed up and the kids moved into the safe houses, Gray gave her time off, said he'd be in touch. She came back to the house to pick up some stuff . . . clothes, she said. Barbi had these guys watching the house. They followed her in and called him. We followed Barbi to the house . . . "

And Ziva spotted a woman inside. Gibbs sent the team in, but - "But Barbi wasn't in the house when you went in," he said. "Was he?"

"Hey, there it is," Tony mocked. "The voice of experience. Next time you should come along."

"You heard fire," Gibbs said. "And - ?"

Tony turned to stare at him. Gibbs watched him back, expressionless, until Tony turned away again.

"Yeah." He was quiet now. "Turns out McGee's a good shot. Took out two guys before Ziva and I even got there. Kort had the other two. But the fifth guy - Zee and I, we had no shot. It all went down in this hallway. McGee and the woman, Maya, they were in the crossfire. And Kort was behind them." Tony frowned. "I saw Tim stumble, he had - " Tony gestured toward his own head. "He got nicked, or cut or something. Blood all over his face. But he - I think the head wound . . ." Tony scratched his own head, blood flaking off his hair. "They said that wasn't serious. Couple stitches. The bullet, though, there's bone - "

"He got winged, he flinched," Gibbs said. "What next."

"Yeah, he - looked fine. He got to Maya first and he just picked her up, like the Hulk, pushed her into the wall, out of the way. The fifth guy - I got him, I think. But then three more guys came in behind him, shooting. It was like - " Another frown. A pause. "They followed Kort and McGee. Only two entrances to that landing."

Gibbs waited for a moment. "And one of them was Barbi?"

"Yeah. One of them was - one of them got McGee, he fell. And I think - then Ziva - we were right there on top of them, in close." Tony glanced at him. "I mean right on top of them." Tony paused, looked confused. "I think she and Kort took them out hand-to-hand. Happened fast."

"You and Ziva alright?"

"Yeah." Tony scratched absently at his head again, caught Gibbs looking him over. He focused on his hands then, finally, and seemed surprised. "This is McGee's," Tony said. "I'm fine. Ziva's fine. Kort - seemed fine. I don't know. I wanted to call an ambulance. Kort said no, since we're not on the clock. And I uh -" Tony shrugged. Straightened. "Tim was bleeding like maybe we didn't have time for an ambulance anyway, so I figured - but then Kort wanted to carry him down to the car - "

Tony sputtered to a halt, unable to go on. Like that was the most horrifying part of all.

"No good?"

"Are you fucking ser - ?"

Gibbs smiled a little.

"You are," Tony deflated. "Sorry. I guess neither of you took anatomy over there in super killer spy school, huh?"

Gibbs raised his eyebrows.

"Anyway," Tony sighed. "Kort said there were boards in the garage. And there were, like a wood pile. So we carried him out on one of those. Wedged him into the back of the sedan. McGee was off his head, saying weird things. Kept saying we were wrong, he couldn't have got shot because he was wearing a vest."

"Was he?"

"Yeah. Went in - " Tony touched his blood smeared shirt where it was tucked into his pants, " - right under the belt."

"Kort stayed at the house?"

"Yeah. I guess - clean up."

"Yeah," Gibbs said. Eight bodies. "I guess so."

They stood there in silence for a minute, and then Gibbs pulled out his phone, scrolled through his speed dials. "Ducky said it'll be another eight hours before we know anything. Got work to do."

Tony looked at him. Really looked. In the blink of an eye he was sharp again, the confusion and the doubt pushed away. "You think Barbi had more with him. More than eight?"

"Yeah. Looks like a few more."

Tony pushed away from the handrail. "What happened with Gray?"

Gibbs looked his second over. "Clean up, Tony. Get Ziva back here and I'll fill you in."

"Yeah, I - okay." He took a step away. Turned back. Sharp as he ever was. "But where's the kid, Boss?"

"Recruiting." Gibbs said, already dialing. "Picking a fight. Starting a war. Now go get your partner and get back here."


	37. A Hero Like McGee

"Yeah."

Fornell answered on the third ring, sleepy and hoarse.

Problem was, Gibbs had dialed before he figured out what he was going to say. He held the phone to his ear and let his eyes track a pair of nurses, whispering together, walking sneaker-soft across the hospital lobby.

Tobias pulled the phone away, squinted at the display, and groaned.

"Gibbs, seriously. You even know what time it is?"

"No."

"Well this better be good."

Silence. And Fornell started to get a bad feeling.

"Gibbs? You drunk?"

Gibbs put his elbows on his knees and bowed his head, because it felt too heavy, in that moment, to hold up. He closed his eyes, saw blood welling up from a boy's body. Rubbed them back open. "No."

Fornell groped for the light by the bed, making an effort to speak clearly. Gibbs didn't sound . . . entirely there. "What's going on, Jethro?"

Gibbs winced. _You don't know me,_ the kid said. _You don't know me._

"Tobias," he said softly. "It's not good."

Fornell's fingers brushed the switch at the base of the lamp. "Okay."

Gibbs nodded, cleared his throat. Okay. "You have anyone undercover here in DC? Gangs or drugs?"

Fornell was halfway out of bed. "Maybe."

"You need to get them out. Pull them now."

"I can't just - "

"Now, Tobias."

Silence. And then - "What's going on, Gibbs?"

"Meet me at Washington Central?"

Fornell paused, pants halfway over his knees. Gibbs' people went to Bethesda.

"Everybody alright?"

Gibbs closed his eyes, shook his head.

"Yeah, okay." Fornell yanked a shirt off a hanger. "I can meet you. When?"

"Get your people off the street first," Gibbs said. "I'll be here."

He hung up, and Fornell let the phone drop from his shoulder into his hand, the other already scooping up his keys. He had the gang unit director on speed dial, and punched her up as he pushed out the door.

**x**

Hospital lots tended to feel wide awake no matter what time it was, in Fornell's experience.

It was a black night, no moon, but the parking lot at Central was lit up bright as day. It felt hushed, expectant, even though it was deserted. He parked and hurried through the cold toward the entrance, and then he felt it. Eyes on him.

He turned casually, still moving. His sweep zeroed in on a bench in the shadows off the walkway and spotyrf the wink of spectacles, streetlights on glass, and the curious blue eyes staring back at him.

He shifted course, walking closer. "Dr. Mallard?"

 

"Agent Fornell. Hello."

The doctor's shrewd eyes were steady, no surprise at seeing Fornell here. But none of Gibbs' people were exactly dumb.

Tobias let his own gaze roam over the building in front of him, big and bright and quiet. Still he felt uneasy.

He turned back to the doctor. "This isn't your regular haunt, is it, doc?"

"I go where I'm called."

"Right." Tobias glanced around again, took another step toward the doors. "Me too."

"You know you don't have to go in, Agent Fornell." The doctor's voice was mild, but it carried in the cold, quiet air.

"Excuse me?"

The blue eyes were beyond shrewd now - they were piercing, sharp like ice. 

"This isn't your . . . mess. He would understand." Mallard rummaged in the pocket of his coat and pulled out an old-fashioned pipe. He squinted into the bowl, and after a moment' consideration, tapped it against the bench. "He might very well be relieved."

Sure he would. Gibbs didn't like asking for help, and he'd already said this was a bad one. That's why he needed the help.

Anyway, if Fornell didn't pick up the phone when the call came - if he didn't walk through the dark doorways, or kick them in - well, he wouldn't be in this job, wouldn't be who he was. He took another step toward the old man. "Sounds like he's gotten himself into a jam."

"Jethro knows how to get himself out of a jam, Agent Fornell." Mallard struck a match and his face flared yellow and orange, chased by blue shadows. He cupped the flame to the pipe and inhaled the first draw of smoke. "But you won't find the formula in the FBI rule book."

Ah. "Good thing I'm off the clock then."

Mallard considered him, savoring the flavor of the smoke, and Fornell shivered against the night wind. A newspaper chased by a papercup skidded across the lot, scrape loud against the asphalt.

"You'd better go in." The doctor said. "If you're going. You should find them on the 9th floor."

Fornell nodded and took another step toward the doors, out of the eerie lot. "You staying out here?"

Mallard shifted, smiled, and the eerie feeling was sucked away. "The company isn't half bad." He smiled, innocent eyes twinkling. Fornell shook his head and hurried in, out of the cold.

**x**

Four hours later the sun was coming up, flooding the ninth floor conference room they'd taken over, and Fornell took a break to stretch his neck, swilling the last of his stone cold coffee. He grimaced, thinking back on the doctor's words.

If there was a rule in the FBI rule book that he hadn't broken since he'd walked into this room, he'd be surprised.

"Yeah." Dinozzo rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Doesn't matter, anything you got. Anything you want. Just hold them. . . Yeah, good . . . okay buddy, you too." He shut his phone. "District three's on board, Boss. They're picking up the highest ranking MS-13 they can find."

Gibbs nodded, bent over a laptop with his fierce-looking assassin-Mossad agent on one side and his barely holding it together goth tech on the other. "Follow up with - "

"Following up with Baltimore, got it."

"Hey, vacation's over, G-man." The hulk sitting next to Fornell glared at him and then at the seat. Tobias sat back down, stifling a sigh.

"First name Emilio," Rodge read off his laptop, "last name Juncos, known associate of MS-13 and our friend Juan Mendez." He indicated the snapshot taped to the wall behind him for Fornell's benefit, a peaceful looking man against a fuzzy beige background, all of it normal except for the eyes, which were brown and dead. He was one of the ones the David girl killed bare handed, apparently.

"Emilio's DOB, 08-13-75, convicted 6-20-07, trafficking, laundering, Hondurus-Mexico-Houston-DC. Out on 12-20-10. Skipped parole, last known addy 6940 Garland Street, Baltimore."

Fornell pecked at his own keyboard, the machine buzzing with 20 open windows. " . . . n-c-o-s. 12-20-10," he muttered. They waited, staring at the screen.

Bingo.

"Flagged in Mexico two months later, 2-17-11, Oaxaca."

Fornell met the hulk's eyes over their laptops. "DC to southern Mexico. Money mover."

Rodge nodded. "Moving between a player here and one in Mexico, or Hondurus maybe. MS-13 territory for sure."

"Didn't figure out a new game in two months," Fornell muttered. "He's using his old contacts. We need this guy's case file . . ." He bent to his computer.

"And he's not moving that fast by land or sea," Rodge mused. "Ziva doll?" He scribbled the name and dates on a notecard and slipped it into the stack under Ziva's hand. "Emilio Juncos, airports, Mexico." She nodded, silent, taking diction with her right hand from her contact at Interpol.

A woman perched on the window ledge paused in her typing and snapped her fingers. The room fell silent.

"Have one," she announced. "121 Highland Ave, District 1, cops called in on shots fired, time 0604 . . . home of Victor Brooks, affiliation 18th Street Gang, firearms in the home. Multiple fatalities on scene. . . . Victor Brooks dead on scene. . . . " She pressed one of the earphones closer into her ear, continued rapidly. "Juan Mendez, affiliation MS-13, dead on scene. Salvador Porto, affiliation MS-13, dead on scene. Fourth unidentified male, dead on scene."

"Dinozzo." Gibbs' eyes drifted from Sarah to his second, and back to the financials Abby was scrolling through. "Find out if that Juan Mendez is Ziva's Juan Mendez."

Dead-guy-at-Gray's-house Juan Mendez?

Tony frowned. "How could that be - ?"

Gibbs wasn't listening, and Tony already knew how that could be, anyway.

Kort, that's how.

Tony hung up on Baltimore and called District 1.

Salvador Porto, Fornell mused. Salvador Porto. Salvador -

"Porto," he muttered. "Salvador - wait a second." He poked at his laptop. "Yeah. Salvador Porto, he's here, this case . . . I remember this. Served eight months for assault, pegged as an enforcer for Emilio Juncos."

Gibbs looked up, just as fierce now as when they'd started hours ago, and pushed. "Anyone serious tied to Porto here in DC?"

"Hold on . . . yeah, three guys brought in on that case, big fish I think," Fornell recalled. "One flipped and testified. Couldn't pin anything to the other two, they walked - here it is. Ruben Cadena, last known . . . wait, he got busted. Lemme try the other one . . . "

Gibbs' stare felt like a physical weight.

"Yeah, here. Thomas Cruz, 930 South Bayes Street in Arlington, Crystal City."

Abby was typing, nodding, red eyes wide. "He's still there."

"Porto to Juncos to Cruz," Rodge said. "Gray's following it back up the chain, from Mendez. Somebody needs to talk to Cruz."

It was the first name they'd pinned before Gray did. The first name that wasn't already a body on the police scanner, anyway, and the room fell quiet again.

Only for a moment.

"Have one," Sarah said. "Maybe. Drive-by off Sheridan Circle, two killed, four wounded, MS-13. Suspect's vehicle a dark sedan, partial plate Lima-Yankee-November-5."

Rodge shook his head. "Sloppy. Sounds like that might actually be 18th Street, starting to retaliate."

Tony jiggled irritably, first his foot, then his hand against his phone. "They've noticed the trail of their freshly murdered people is surrounded by dead MS-13, then." And it was already in the streets. Cutting down the youngest, the most vulnerable first. Innocent bystanders weren't far off.

Gray's strategy was clear enough. Londono had found someone high enough in MS-13 to order the hits. Gray would work his way up the organization and find that person. He would have the hit rescinded - he would probably have that person rescinded - and the promise of a reward removed.

In the meantime the war he'd ignited so easily between the two gangs would be a good distraction, keep them hunting each other instead of hunting him. The absurd level of violence kicked off by warring gangs would help to cover Gray's bloody tracks.

The faster it was over, Gibbs reasoned, the faster the violence on all fronts would stop. The faster Gray would come in.

Gibbs spoke to the Rangers sitting across the table, aware of his team's and Tobias' eyes on him. "You have a way to contact him?"

Rodge shook his head. "He'll send a runner."

A runner?

"Why not a pigeon?" Gibbs muttered, and took out his phone. "I'll try his cell."

Pete, on the far side of Rodge, looked up from piles of bank statements and wire transers for the first time since Fornell walked in. And spoke for the first time, too. "Whose cell?"

Gibbs punched up the number, hit dial. "Gray's."

Gray's cell? Rodge mouthed.

Fornell raised his eyebrows. Gibbs was handing Cruz over to the no-name kids then, whatever that meant. Not anything very good for Cruz, if the police scanner the last few hours was anything to go by.

Fornell focused on the name in front of him, some business partner's of Emilio's. But what he saw was Angela Monaco, her quick laugh, the tiny engagement ring. Her limp hands when they'd fished her out of the river. He thought about Dargas' kid, the fresh-faced picture on his college ID, the blue skin of his head in the NCIS morgue. The mother kept asking about her son's body - all the way through the funeral, she kept asking. As if the answer would change, must change.

Setting the same thing loose on their behalf, setting Gray loose, wasn't right. It wasn't good. And for this Gray - it was bad. Judging from the weight in Gibbs' eyes, the anger, it was very bad. Fornell knew enough to know that, of course. But right now, right in this moment, he just didn't care. They had to stop this cartel. Somebody had to stop them, and this team was it. He didn't know what the pictures were, exactly, that were driving the others gathered around the table, pushing them to take the risk that sitting here meant. Pushing the kid out there toward a cliff, into a fall they might not be able to pull him back out of. But Fornell didn't think their daydreams were any prettier than his own.

Gibbs listened to the automated message service that picked up whenever he dialed Gray's number. At the tone he spoke clearly. "We've traced Emilio Juncos to Mexico, he's probably still there. Not a dead end but no known movement in the States in the last month. He has a substantial contact here though, name's Thomas Cruz. 930 Bayes Street, Arlington." He opened his mouth to say something else. Hesitated. "Watch your back. Come in if you run into trouble." He tapped a finger on the file next to him. Felt Abby's eyes on him. "Or just - come in."

He ended the call and they went back to their computers and their phones and their scanners. Not ten minutes later Ducky walked in, followed by a surgeon, an older man. They all stood up just as he was sitting down.

He was kind and he smiled. He patted Abby's hand and said that McGee had a long road ahead of him. A long road. Abby turned away from her computer, away from the table. She pulled Gibbs into a hug, and she finally cried.

**x**

There was yelling when Kort showed up. From Dinozzo mostly, about bodies - dead ones and wounded ones - and something about procedure clearing houses. Gibbs ignored it, Abby slept through it, and the hulk named Rodge watched halfheartedly, distracted and amused. Fornell got up to take a leak, grabbed a couple of Pop Tarts from the vending machine, and checked in with his own team. They were attached to the gang unit for the weekend, blindly grilling the MS-13 and 18th Street hotshots Fornell had organized hauling in the night before.

Dinozzo and Kort were still hissing at each other when Fornell came back, like cats in a bag. His eyes wandered over Ziva as he settled down again. She was still working next to Gibbs, ignoring the two men squabbling over her. Literally standing over her.

Cats in a bag - more like tom cats in an alley, Fornell thought. He munched a Pop Tart and offered half to the Hulk.

Gibbs studied the family tree of gang members Abby'd made for him before she passed out and eyed Kort carefully. The man collapsed into an armchair, his fine suit - his whole being - a wreck. He smelled like smoke and blood.

"Were you on scene at Highland Avenue, Kort?" Gibbs broke in.

Kort and Dinozzo abruptly fell silent.

Kort looked confused, through the exhaustion. "No. What's at Highland Avenue?"

"The home of an 18th Street gangmember," Tony said, caustic. "Recently deceased. And also on Highland Avenue is one of the dead MS-13 guys Ziva killed yesterday, although when we left you with his body it was on the other side of the city. Care to explain?"

Kort leaned back into the chair. "Gray sent a runner to the house, to his house, after you left. Said he could use the bodies. We arranged a pick-up." He shrugged at Tony's glare and glanced listlessly at Ziva. She was still on the phone with Interpol, looking unconcerned. "What? It's convenient. They've all been cleaned, anyway. However Gray decides to use them they can't be tied back to you."

Ziva nodded perfunctorily, as if she'd assumed all that with only one ear on the conversation. Tony grit his teeth, sitting on his frustration.

"Where've you been then, Shorty?" Rodge gazed at the CIA Agent enviously. "You reek like a fight."

"You do." Pete looked up, looked Kort over, didn't see anything bleeding and went back to his accounts.

Kort ran a hand over his hair and frowned at the layer of grit that came off in his palm. "There was an explosion at the home of a Swiss national in Silver Spring a few hours ago. At one of his homes, I should say. Name is Yves Genvier. The Agency asked me to look into it."

"Because?" Gibbs queried.

"The Agency has questions about Genvier's connections in South America and his ability to move material between South America, the States, and Europe. He may have ties to the Calera organization, to the Zetas, to the Sinaloa," he shrugged. "Possibly more."

"He may?" Gibbs said sharply. "Not he did? He wasn't in the house?"

Kort's eyes drifted to the window. "The house was incinerated. It will be days before investigators know if anyone was there or not."

So Gray could have had him, and killed him. Or Gray could still have him. Or, Tony supposed, Gray could have missed him altogether.

"Didn't hear about that," Sarah noted.

"It was billed as a run-of-the-mill house fire," Kort said. "Genvier isn't on law enforcement's radar, they wouldn't attach any special notice to it."

Tony watched an odd sort of recognition smooth over Rodge's face. "So you think this was Gray?" Tony asked. "He know this guy?"

"I don't know if Gray knows him," Kort sighed. "But I wouldn't be surprised. It wasn't a house fire. Too thorough. As to why, a man like Genvier could be holding millions in money or material at any given time, not to mention his intel, if he really is a point of contact for half a dozen cartels. He also doesn't seem to be known any better by the criminal underworld than he is by us. From what I could see his security was minimal."

"Easy mark," Gibbs said. "High yield."

Kort nodded agreement.

"Not to mention," Rodge added, offhand, "Cop girl's a dab hand at explosives."

The NCIS Agents glanced curiously from Rodge to Kort.

"Cassie? That so?" Gibbs asked.

"Yes," Kort said, reluctant.

"A gas leak-esque, looks like an accident, perfectly reasonable-ish house fire that burns hot enough to incinerate a body and would not raise the suspicions of a fire investigator," Tony clarified. "That kind of explosion."

"Yes."

"Not to mention all the other kinds," Rodge murmured.

Pete reached over, and with an impressive bicep press, tipped the other man out of his chair. "Shut up, Rodge. And go get us some breakfast."

Rodge lumbered off.

Fornell shook his head and went back to his unauthorized, completely illegal file search. He was not hearing any of this. There was a reason you were supposed to clear out of the house when the termites were winning, and the exterminators came fumigating. It wasn't good to even be exposed to that stuff. Stick around and the poison that got rid of the bugs would get you, too.

**x**

By 1100 they'd moved McGee into a private room with an honest to god private nurse, just a few doors down from where the team was set up. Abby curled into an armchair at his side and stared at him for an hour, listening to the compress of air, to the beep of the monitors and the click of the dials. Eventually she drifted into sleep.

Gibbs left another message and another name for Gray. When he couldn't put it off any longer he got up and walked down the hall to make a call to Vance. The call ended up taking longer than he'd have liked. The gang violence was heating up, Gray's strategy to ignite a war between two of DC's most vicious criminal networks was working like a charm, and law enforcement was buzzing.

When Gibbs walked back toward McGee's room, Dinozzo was perched in a chair a bit down the hall, carefully not watching a tall man standing at the oversized window looking into McGee's room. Gibbs paused, cautious of security even in this ultra-secure ward, until he recognized him and strode forward.

He wondered at Tony's watchfulness, at his distance. He held out a hand. "Admiral McGee, sir. Jethro Gibbs."

The Admiral was taller than Tim, his hair darker and shorter. The color of the green eyes was the same. Admiral McGee looked Gibbs over once and dismissed him. "I know who you are."

An awkward beat, and Gibbs let his empty hand fall. "Is there anything - "

"No."

Gibbs forced himself to keep it relaxed. He'd dealt with angry families before. He'd dealt with all kinds. "Admiral, if you - "

"My son chooses to work with you," McGee interrupted. His eyes were still on the bundled up body lying beyond the glass. "Chooses to take orders from you and to listen to what a man like you has to say." A thoughtful pause, and a cold one. "My son is naive. Impressionable. Maybe even corrupt. But I am none of those things, Agent Gibbs. And I'd rather not listen to your apologies for the state Tim is in."

"Sir - "

"How about this, Agent Gibbs." Gibbs drew back, somewhat. McGee senior said the title like an insult. "If you don't remove yourself from my presence I'll have you arrested." McGee glanced from his son to Gibbs, the haunting green eyes lingering for a long moment. "My clearance is extensive and I know your . . . record. It wouldn't be difficult to come up with charges that would see you in prison for the rest of your life. The first might explore why my son, an NCIS agent, isn't being cared for at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Or why there is no record of his being wounded, though he's obviously been shot and nearly killed. On your watch. Now, if you'll get out of my sight."

The Admiral turned back to the viewing pane. Gibbs spun on his heel and headed to where Dinozzo was sitting, now studying his shoes. But Gibbs had only moved forward a half-step when a slight form melted out of the alcove next to him, blocking his way. Gibbs teetered to a halt. 

Alex peered over Gibbs shoulder without actually paying Gibbs any mind. He was eyeing McGee senior. "Who's this fucktard?" 

It was loud enough to echo through the corridor.

"Alex. Watch your mouth," Gibbs said, mild, and put a hand on the boy's shoulder to steer him around. "And come with me."

"No seriously." Alex slipped the hold on his shoulder, deceptively easy, and stepped around Gibbs to stare at the man behind him. "Who's the creepy fuckwit hanging around McGee's room?"

He dodged Gibbs' hand like a cat.

"None of your business," Gibbs said, low.

"Well we should stay here! McGee would want you around." He slipped out of Gibbs' grip again, so skinny it was like trying to hold string. Then he started whispering, in a theatrically loud way. "I'm okay, Agent Gibbs. You can concentrate on McGee. Is that asshole McGee's _dad_? Should we call _security_?"

"Alex," Gibbs growled, crowding him back. "Can it."

The urgent whisper, nonsensical in the face of Gibbs' calm, grew more hysterical. "But, Agent Gibbs! Somebody has to stay with McGee! What if he wakes up to that - "

From the corner of his eye Gibbs caught the stiff, silent man's turn. Saw him begin to walk away. Alex grinned in triumph.

" - numbnut bastard! McGee should have _you_ \- "

Gibbs seized the kid's elbow and dragged him in the opposite direction. Alex didn't seem to notice.

" - You or your team, you know," he called, and laughed after the retreating man's back. "Somebody a hero like McGee would want around!"

The door at the end of the hall swung shut. Gibbs pushed Alex through the conference room door and let loose. "What the hell?"

But Alex only slipped his grip again, fiercely this time, and in a blur was out of reach. When he stilled his hand was at his waist, the room was frozen, and his voice had turned flat and serious. "Who're they?"

His eyes wavered between Fornell and Sarah.

"Fornell," Gibbs said, pointing. "Sarah. Our team." He turned to Alex, jerked out a chair. "Sit. You even think about pulling a weapon in this hospital and so help me I'll find a way to hogtie you, one arm and all."

Alex relaxed and flopped down into the chair. "You could try."

Gibbs breathed, once. Twice. "That was McGee's father - "

Alex perked up. "Want me to take care of him?"

Gibbs deliberately pulled up a chair and sat down across from Alex, knee-to-knee. He leaned in close and pinned Alex's curious gaze with his own. "You are never going to have anything to do with that man ever again. Nothing, of any kind. Are we clear?" He let himself yell at the end there, a little anyway.

Alex's eyes were big, unblinking. The room held its breath. "Yeah. No need to screech, man."

Gibbs adjusted his shoulders, leaned in even closer, and lowered his voice to menacing. "That man is McGee's father - "

"Bastard," Alex noted, calm. "I did him a favor. Just cause you . . . "

Gibbs held up a hand, staring fit to kill, and Alex trailed off.

" - and their relationship is none of your business. Do you get that?"

"Okay." Alex agreed easily. "Whatever you say, Gibbs."

Gibbs narrowed his eyes, truly and seriously pissed, and Alex smiled back at him.

"Sooo . . ." Pete broke the silence. "If I may ask. What're you doing here, Hook?"

Alex's eyes shifted over toward the Rangers. "Cruz was good, gave up a lot of names," he said promptly, nodding toward Gibbs. "But a lot of them are locked up already. One of the main ones is William Falto, 04-08-60. Need his contacts."

"I can look that up," Sarah offered, hesitant. She looked uncertain about taking her eyes off of the kid, though, and Fornell didn't blame her. He definitely wasn't going to. Kid was carrying, for one. In this hospital, which was insane. And on top of that he was himself clearly insane.

Gibbs nodded curtly her way, and she brought up the arrest record and then the trial record. The home and basic financial records Dinozzo shot over to her, and she pulled up a truckload of FBI material through the network humming away on Fornell's computer.

Alex and Pete chatted about amputations, and then about prothetic limbs, and then about the fact that Alex was not wearing his prothetic limb. Finally they discussed gut wounds like McGee's, a subject with which Alex was way too knowledgeable and enthusiastic for comfort.

Dinozzo and Sarah cross referenced and came up with a list of eight names and addresses. She hesitated as she finished writing them out, along with brief notes on the relationships. "This is a lot."

"We'll narrow it down." Alex's hand stretched along the polished surface of the table, toward the list.

Gibbs held out his hand and Sarah pulled the paper out from under Alex's fingers and passed it to him instead. He recognized five of the names as players in the area and wrote down the three most prominent, finally offering the stripped down list to Alex.

Alex took the paper, looked it over, and frowned. "Where's the families?"

Gibbs shook his head.

"Aw c'mon, this Falto guy's 50 something. He's probably got kids in the business and a whole pile of grandkids coming up too."

That was true. He did.

Gibbs reached over to the lid of Sarah's laptop, still humming with the databases that generated  the list, and pushed it shut.

Alex stiffened, subtly. Like he might be offended, confused. Or just impatient. "He wouldn't actually use the kids," he said casually. "The grandkids. It's just faster when he knows everything there is to know."

Gibbs nodded. He knew how that was faster. He knew it from both ends.

Alex cocked his head, frowned a little. Gibbs couldn't tell if that was an affectation, or just part of the kid's expressive nature. He was naturally so expressive, it was almost -

And then he wondered. Was he a highly energetic, typical adolescent boy, terrible at subtle? Or was Alex just a little energetic, not at all typical, and very, very subtle.

"He'll find out anyway," Alex said. "He can get them to tell him anything."

"Maybe," Gibbs said. "But if he wants this he'll have to come in and ask me for it himself."

"But I already know what he would say."

"And what's that?"

"He would say, 'Just give me the kids who are Bean's age and under," Alex smiled. "And we'll hold those in reserve."

Gibbs studied his expression, and Alex let him. "Well, that's not how we work."

"No?"

"No. Under eighteen is untouchable," Gibbs said. "Over eighteen, you can yell."

Alex hmmed, like he was thinking hard. "Untouchable - you mean like you wear latex yourself, gloves like, and use some kind of blunt instrument when you fuck them?"

Rodge looked up from his laptop. Sat forward smoothly. "What was that?"

Gibbs shook his head. Subtle it was. And a lot of control. "That was atypical - "

"Well, let's hope Bean getting shot up is atypical too," Alex pointed out. "And poor McGee of course. Get me all the info on this guy and we can make sure that it is."

" - and it didn't go that far," Gibbs stressed, shooting a look at Rodge. "Anyway, those agents were punished for what they did. Because what they did was against the rules."

"And you're so attached to the rules."

"I am," Gibbs countered calmly. "I follow all of my rules, always."

Ziva smiled at that.

And Alex did too. "Okay then. So we're agreed it went pretty far," he said, "by anybody's rules. And I agree on that one guy getting what was coming to him. Ole Diablo did dish out some good punishment. What else can we agree on? How about you just give me all the ones over eighteen? That doesn't even break any of your rules, and for us, it would make things easier."

Gibbs closed his eyes and ran a hand down his face. He felt an ominous surge in his gut, remembering the bodies of the FBI Agents . . . the remains, more like, that they'd recovered in O'Donnell's shack.

He shook his head. This day was just never going to end.

"I'm not negotiating with you," Gibbs said. "You've got everything you're going to get from us on Falto." He pushed the memory away with long practiced ease, and looked the boy in front of him over with interest. Before, he would have pegged him as too young, too easy going to have earned his way in Gray's crew all on his own, even with the arm. He'd have guessed some older kid paved the way for him.

But now - "You're not anybody's kid brother, are you, Alex."

"Huh?" Genuine confusion that time.

Gibbs shook his head. "Nothing." He pushed the paper with the three names back over to Alex. "Here you go. You need a ride?"

Alex smiled, stood. "He said you'd ask me that. He said to tell you no, for both of us. And he said to say . . . " He frowned, remembering the exact words. "He said he's having a bad day. But it doesn't really matter, because everyone is."

Alex looked quizzically at him, wondering if that was right.

Gibbs nodded. "Tell him thanks for telling me, okay? We'll deal with it when he comes in. And tell him what I said about under 18 untouchable, over 18 yelling. Alright?"

A little laugh. "Yeah okay."

Gibbs gave him a tiny grin back, and watched him walk out the door. Listened to him walk down the hallway. Then he stood.

"You," he nodded at Dinozzo. "With me." He stalked out of the conference room and stopped at a random door a few rooms down. He pushed it open, checked it was empty, gestured Tony in, and let it swing shut behind him.

"What the hell was that, Dinozzo?"

Tony lookee puzzled. "Was what? Alex?"

"No, not Alex," he spat, and pointed through the wall, out in the direction of the corridor. "Alex made perfect sense to me. I'm talking about _that_. McGee."

"McGee's dad?" Tony held on tight to oblivious. "Well his sister's in Cancun, on spring break apparently. Nice right? But ironic, Mexico and all. His grandmother's out of the country, Europe somewhere, Germany or Italy, someplace with castles I think. And his mother's in Iowa. Or maybe it was Idaho. One of those with the corn, or maybe it was potatoes? Visiting relatives." Tony frowned ever so slightly, the look the palest shadow of the black storm crossing Gibbs' face. "Don't know how his dad came to find out where he was. Is, I mean. Come to think of it."

"You don't know how the admiral found out? He's an admiral, Dinozzo. He's _Admiral_ McGee."

"Well, yeah, but - "

Gibbs rubbed a hand through his hair.

Tony tried again, gesturing toward the door. "So he has - "

"Yeah, Dinozzo! He can find out whatever he wants."

"Hm. Well," Tony said pleasantly. "That would explain it."

"Not that his rank has anything to do with it." Gibbs had not calmed. But he'd contained his fury. He leaned against a stripped hospital bed, arms across his chest, and waited.

Tony met his stare. And then he looked out the window. He did not think about McGee falling, or McGee's blood, or McGee getting quiet in the car. He didn't think about torture or nannies or kids or drive-bys or drugs or drug lords. He thought about fantasy football.

"How long has that been going on?"

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "McGee not being best pals with his dad? Don't know about you but I get the impression it was in the cub scout era, really, when things started going downhill."

"That wasn't 'we're not best pals.'"

Tony scratched at his stubble. He needed to run down to the gift shop and pick up a shaving kit. They probably had nicer ones here than he had at home.

"Since Kate," he said. "They haven't spoken since Kate."

Gibbs opened his mouth, eventually, and took a silent breath. But he was quiet for so long, too long, and that's how Tony knew he was shocked.

"Since Kate died," Gibbs said steadily. "But it's about my record. Because she died on my watch?"

That was it. McGee's father would have Gibbs' military service record, and his family history, the whole thing, and his black ops too.

When Ari went down they said it was too personal. Too many on his team exposed. And Gibbs had deliberately drawn his fire. Anyone who managed to climb the ranks to admiral wouldn't like Gibbs' unorthodox handling of that whole - and then Ziva, that had drawn suspicion from every brass button under the sun, except of course for Jenny.

That one and Kate still stung, always would, and he knew why. It was his responsibility for them. They were his Probies. And now they were dead.

"He doesn't want his only son on my team."

"Boss - Gibbs," Tony shook his head. "Look, I think you were right with the none of our business thing - "

"Tony," Gibbs stopped him. "You heard the doctors. McGee is going to need help for a long time. He's going to need his family around him."

"He'll have his family," Tony said.

"He needs his dad."

"No," Tony said quietly. "He doesn't."

As far as Tony was concerned, Hook got that one right.

Gibbs was still looking at him, but his eyes were inward now, not seeing, and Tony could tell he was rearranging the last six years in his head. Seeing it all unfold again, seeing the Probie grow up, basically, in a different way.

Gibbs liked to have everything figured out. Sometimes, funnily, that meant he missed one or two of the more basic things.

"We can move him to Bethesda when he's more stable," Gibbs said finally. "Kort can fix the paper trail, with enough motivation." He pushed off from the bed and paced in a slow, tiny circle, and Tony watched him, feeling weary. Watched him figuring it all out again. "He'll probably be more comfortable there anyway. Abby - " Gibbs paused.

Tony cocked the other eyebrow.

"Is it just me," Gibbs asked slowly. "Or is it the team?"

"Boss," Tony sighed. "Tim's a big boy. Really, as Abby has noted, he has a backbone now and everything. He can figure this out on his - "

"Yeah, Dinozzo, I know. But if he can salvage something with his father he should. Now is it just me, or is it the team?"

Tony laughed. What a question. "Gibbs, it's the same thing. It was his father who made him choose. His job or his dad. The team or his dad. You or his dad. However you want to look at it."

Well, it was obvious how he wanted to look at it - Gibbs always had to look at it like -

"Tim chose the job," Tony said. "All on his own. And his dad can't deal with that." Because he was a fucktard, or a fuckwit, or something like that. Anyway - "Not our problem." Certainly not Tim's problem. He had the team, had Abby, him and Ziva, Ducky and Gibbs. Whatever name Gibbs wanted to give it, that wasn't really important.

Tony pushed off from the wall he was leaning against, heading for the door. "Pretty much the same choice we'd all make." Tony was fine, but his voice was a little thin just then. Probably because he hadn't slept in . . . so long. "Really, for anyone who's reached - " Dinozzo's voice cut off, silenced by the closing door.

Gibbs turned away, to look out the window.

He had to go back. Gray was out there, doing he didn't even want to think about what. And all the kids, and the gangs -

Family first, he'd said that before, so many times. He'd said it to Tim especially, and Tim had agreed, easy, open. Family first.

The job over his father - that's what Dinozzo said. But Gibbs knew that wasn't true. He knew Tim. He knew Tony - and the things Tony wouldn't say.

It wasn't the job, it was Gibbs. Tim chose Gibbs.


	38. Rough

When things get rough those that can hole up, hunker down, hide away. When the shooting got bad between 13 and the 18th Streeters, Preacher didn't step foot out of the little apartment over his club for eight days.

Eight days isn't all that long to some people. Jamie knew he could spend a month on a couch easy, and no complaints. But Preacher wasn't like that. You don't get to be a boss like Preacher in a place like south Baltimore just sitting on the couch.

"Yo J, how's it going."

Jamie grinned at the corner hoods, top lip stretching strange over the gap in his front teeth. There hadn't been any teeth there for years and years, but it still felt strange. "Pretty good, pretty good now, yourself?" He moved along like he always did, too fast to be irritating, too broken to be threatening.

He slid down the outside of the sidewalks, down Franklin Avenue and the old chop-shop electronics store, down Oakwood, past the fresh brick and shiny dark windows of the new community college building, sticking out like a sleek sore thumb. Jamie nodded to a man in a leather jacket standing at the side door to Preacher's building. Jamie shifted foot to foot til he got the nod to go up.

When he finally got up there, Preacher was out in the front room, pacing circle-shaped holes in the floor. Pale flat circles right there in the carpet. Preacher was a big man - not fat, but tall and solid - and he was handsome. Had the iron features of an action hero in a movie. When he saw Jamie come in, Preacher settled slow into a chair and waved a hand, invitation, permission.

Jamie perched on the chair across and smiled as he talked, nervous and hollow, thin over the gap in his teeth.

Everybody knew Preacher's outfit was losing money, big money, every minute of the day. Too much fighting meant hardly anybody coming out for trade. That meant no money for the restless men like Preacher, no supply for the couch boys like Jamie.

And that right there is how Jamie ended up sitting across from Preacher that one sunny afternoon, Jamie just a bum and Preacher a boss so high hardly anybody ever even seen him. Jamie was in Preacher's castle because the whole system was busted with all the fighting and nobody was happy.

Jamie stopped talking and Preacher moved sort of sudden in his chair, put one of his knees up over the other, flat movie-eyes bored. But then he said something that made Jamie figure he was really listening.

"So, what're you getting out of this, J?" That's what he said.

The boy who gave Jamie the front money said he should just tell it like it was, tell it straight up, so he did.

"Well, they give me a hit free right off for coming here. And a hundred up front too." He'd stashed it though, cause people hear you got two cents to your name and people get greedy. "And I get another hundred even, no matter how it come out."

Preacher made a whistle with his lips, like he was impressed. "Hundred even."

That's not much to a man like Preacher, Jamie knew, but he wasn't done.

"And if it works out then I get ten even, anyway I want it, plus a room to stay too, through the end of the month." It was only the fourth. Almost a whole month, plus a thousand dollars. Jamie breathed real careful, slow. Otherwise he'd look too excited.

Boss like Preacher might have a thousand in his pocket every day, a thousand in the couch cushions, Jamie didn't know. But that's not small change for a scrounger like Jamie, and Jamie was looking at getting that just for the message.

Imagine what their boys got that do real things. And they had boys doing real things, no mistake. They gave Jamie a trash bag to bring along to the meeting with Preacher. They told him what was in it first, straight up, case he didn't want to carry it even for that kind of money. But Jamie didn't mind carrying it, just as long as he didn't have to look.

Eighteen hands, that's what was in there. People's hands. All lefties. Eighteen dead dealers, eighteen gang boys. Eighteen dead open vacancies, opportunities. That's what that bag was for an enterprising dealer. And that's what Preacher was thinking, course, with those hungry circling eyes he got.

"Like I said, they don't want to mix it up with you, Preach." Jamie could hear his voice all high and nervous, but that was okay, that was good, cause he wasn't a threat. "They said they just want the information, if you have it, cause it's been messy down there where they operate, in Mexico, and they want to smooth things along, get em back to the way they was running before boss, more efficient, you know?"

That was what everybody wanted, wasn't it? Cause those last few weeks it was like the plagues of Egypt out there, with all the main men holed up tight, out of sight, and no supply to the little streets at all.

"And I'm just supposed to smile and go along nice when I don't even know who I'm dealing with? That it?"

Now, Jamie'd known Preacher since he was a kid on the corner, and he knew Jamie too, cause everybody did. But that wasn't what Preacher meant—Jamie might be the man standing across from him, but on that day it wasn't just a lowdown addict Preach was dealing with.

Jamie smiled again. He felt sweaty and cold, felt the hit wearing off. "Well now, they said it's just an offer, you can take it or leave it, can't you? They ain't come after your people yet and they won't either. But they got the money and the soldiers and they said – well the one I talked to, he said they going to keep going till they have answers, and that means – " Jamie waved a hand at the window pulled open to the chilly spring air, open to the street and the quiet. Open to the empty, to the wind, and all the silence that only whispered and whispered and teased that one thing. No supply, no people. No people, no dealing. No dealing, no money. No money. No money.

Preacher stood up and walked out the kitchen, back to the living room where a woman and his boys were hanging, watching TV, and they got to talking.

Jamie watched a plane fly by out the window. There was a big tree out there, must have been real nice in the summertime, with the leaves blowing.

Jamie'd never been on a plane. Wasn't sure he'd really ever want to – never felt the need to go that far. But he wondered about them, when he'd look up and notice.

When he turned from the window Preacher was sitting at the table again, watching him.

"How you know this crew, J?"

"Don't," Jamie said. "They know me."

"Mexicans?"

"Only ever met two little ones." He held up a hand to show how short exactly. "Didn't look Mexican."

"My people don't mess around that cartel shit," Preacher said. "But I can find what they want to know. Going to cost."

Jamie didn't have any kind of instructions regarding negotiations. "I don't – "

"They'll come find you. You're going to tell them I have the name. You tell them I want 250."

Two fifty. No joke. Jamie sat there feeling like he never even heard a number that high. Like maybe he didn't even know how to count that far. And maybe like he didn't know what kind of game this was, precisely.

"Two – ?"

"Name a Mexican boss ain't no small thing." Preacher nodded to the door. "Get on now."

Jamie was back the next day. He had two hundred dollars tucked away and a fresh supply waiting, more than he ever had in his stash before. And there was a thousand more coming if it all went good. That was the gravy train alright, best job he ever had. Excepting that bag with the hands.

"Well, they said they get you 250 if you want it, Preach. But they also say they rather give you a name worth more."

Preacher laughed, but it was mean. "You tell me what kind a name is worth more than a quarter mil, J."

That part made Jamie nervous. He didn't generally get into serious conversations with people like Preacher. He pulled out the envelope the kid gave him and put it there on the table in front of Preacher. "Don't know." But he knew the kind. "Guessing it's a snitch."

Preacher looked at the envelope like maybe he could see through the paper. "My crew?"

That Jamie wasn't real clear about. "Don't know. But they knew for a fact you done deals with him. Oh yeah, and they said too, you clear him out, you have his route. They don't do routes. That's what they say."

Preacher took the envelope.

He said the boss they were looking for down in Mexico – well, the name didn't matter. Everybody called him L5. Preacher told Jamie the way to make the contact with L5, and Jamie memorized it word for word.

**x**

L5's younger brother was in hiding in his girlfriend's house in Houston, a house he bought and furnished with cash. When he came around he was handcuffed to his own dining room chair.

They'd been masked when they came in, but the first thing he saw waking up was Gray's face. You could tell he knew what that meant.

L5's brother was calm, anyway. "Who the fuck are you?"

Gray didn't answer. That answer didn't matter.

L5's brother was tall. Gray sat on the corner of the table, so he was higher up. It was stupid, the little things that made a difference. Being taller was an advantage. But it didn't matter how you got there – just sitting a little higher worked fine.

The brother pulled at the cords holding him to the chair. "What do you want?"

"For this to be as painless as possible," Gray said. Thing about talking to people who are already dead. You can just be honest.

"Get the fuck out of my house," the guy said, low. "Painless."

"You run a crew for 13 out of Mexico. I need your boss. Need to know who's behind this." Gray held up the paper they found back in DC. The one with his own face on it, and Truck's and Cop's. The brother's eyes flicked between the paper and Gray's face.

He grunted and jerked at the ties on his arms again. Always seemed like it was hard for the strong ones to stop doing that.

"Get the fuck out of here, you little fuck!" He heaved against the chair, making it creak.

Gray gave him a minute to think on it, to tire, and then he pulled out the knife he kept in the side pocket of his pants. Wasn't really a weapon, too small and fine. If you looked close you could see a faint engraving, a grinning snake, running down the handle and into the blade.

"Don't care how you go," Gray said. Honest. "But we might negotiate some things. Make it easy."

Thick veins popped in the guy's neck, in his forehead. He sucked in his breath and roared. "Get out of my house!"

"Take screaming," Gray said. "Probably scare the kids. We can avoid that. If you want."

"I'm gonna kill you."

Gray gave him another minute. And then – "We don't have a lot of time. And I don't really care if you frighten your kids or not."

The man breathed carefully, thinking. He'd climbed the ranks from as low as they go. With the right encouragement he would not be stupid.

"Where they at?"

"Upstairs."

"They ma?"

"Her too."

The brother breathed through his nose. Getting his head around asking. "Well what if I want to see them."

Pathetic, Dex whispered, too close. The man really in front of Gray seemed very far away. Only the blade in his hand felt right in that moment, cool and real. "If there's time," Gray said. "And you give me what I want."

The man jerked irritably and spit on Gray, spit all over his shirt. "Don't want to see em that much," he sneered. "You just get on with it, boy."

"There are other things you want," Gray said. He could hear it in his voice, how far away he was. He watched from way out as the sneer drained from the face, saw how L5's brother fell and opened to him, way down deep, how he opened to fear and despair.

Gray lifted his empty hand, movement slow. That hand was not a threat. "This house. What's it, five bedroom? Six? Real nice. Took a look at your accounts, or your girlfriend's accounts I guess. She's not doing too bad. You love her huh, give her this life?"

The man breathed like a bull, but then he forced himself again to calm. L5's brother was strong where it counted, had a strong mind. Gray smiled. He liked this man.

"My boys take care of my family, asshole," the man said. "And they going to take care of you."

"I haven't decided yet if I'm going to let your boys live." Gray took out a list and set it on the table. L5's Houston people, and all their addresses, and all their family, and all their addresses. All the intel a week of blood had bought them. "Is that something you want?"

L5's brother died quietly, in the end. Painless. And everybody got something they wanted.

**x**

The hospital was like a body, a giant with its own life, its own rhythm and soul. It wheezed in at 6am and out again at 6pm, sucking in fresh staff, heaving them back out drained, the cycle of life to keep a building running. Its machinery was the brains, humming constant and quiet in the background, blinking and clicking, getting you high and bringing you down, waking you up and making you sleep. On occasion, making everybody panic.

The first time McGee opened his eyes there were strange faces and bright lights, loud voices and the tube cutting up his throat. The second time it was dark. There was nobody there that he could see, nothing to listen to but the machines. He was too confused to be afraid, too exhausted to figure anything out.

He drifted and blinked and then Tony was there.

"McGoo," he said. "Finally. You're eighteen hours late for your shift, you know. Lazybones."

Tim had to think about that. Things were buzzing, something in the room or maybe something in his head, he wasn't sure. "Got shot," he croaked.

"Yep." Tony turned, reached behind him. "And what'd I tell you about that?"

"Uh . . ." He was so tired. But Tony was looking at him, waiting. "You said better you than me," Tim rasped.

"Exactly. C'mere."

Tim didn't know why Tony said that. He couldn't go anywhere. But Tony came to him, tipped a plastic cup over his mouth, and he was so parched the ice didn't even make it to the back of his throat before it soaked into his tongue.

"More," McGee said.

Tony gave him more and then he just sat there, looking at McGee, looking un-Tony. Tim was going to ask him what was wrong. But he blinked and Tony was gone. Abby was there instead. She looked huge. All he could see were her eyes.

It confused him at first and then he realized she was lying next to him, her nose almost touching his.

"Okay?" he whispered.

She nodded, careful, tiny movement. "You?"

He fell asleep.

**x**

When he woke up again Gibbs was there.

McGee knew a long time had passed. The light was different, for one, and everything hurt now. He tried to move, to get more comfortable. Cold knives stabbed up his spine. He cried out, or tried to – that hurt too, and all that came out was a weak, cut-off squeak.

Gibbs put aside whatever papers he'd been looking at, got up and walked away.

A second later he came back, trailing a nurse. She put her hand on McGee's wrist and watched a monitor, movement efficient, focus on his vitals. Her speech was cheerful and rote. "Hello, Agent McGee. Welcome back. My name's Theresa, I'm your day shift nurse. How are you feeling?"

"Kay," McGee breathed.

"I bet." She fiddled with the morphine machine, finally put the lead with the button in his hand. "Doctor Zunner will be around a bit later to discuss your injuries and your recovery, okay? But in the meantime we're going to keep you comfortable. You got it, hon? Feel it under your thumb?"

McGee felt it, under his hand.

He took a moment, worked his throat, formed the word. Like he used to practice with the speech therapist all those hours, those years after school, making sure his voice would sound steady, would be strong.

"Yes," he said.

It came out shaky.

"Yes," he said again, a little better.

She adjusted the bed so he wasn't lying so flat and gave him a sip of water. McGee's eyes tracked Gibbs, moving back to his chair.

The nurse checked every one of the mess of wires and tubes and then she fluffed the pillow, somehow, without moving his neck. "Just click it when you feel uncomfortable, okay Tim? And I'm available whenever you need me. You press the blue button if you need anything at all." She moved his forefinger on the plastic box in his hand. He felt the give of the call button, "or you ask Agent Gibbs or Dinozzo here to come get me. Alright Tim?" She was kind of whispering, he realized. He wondered why.

"Yeah."

She grinned at him and walked out of sight, soft shoes too quiet to hear fading away.

He wasn't really sitting up. The bed was only adjusted a few inches. The new position still felt strange, though, like it was risky, and he closed his eyes against a wave of vertigo.

When it passed McGee decided to focus on breathing, trying to convince himself that the feeling wasn't pain. Was just . . . discomfort. The nurse was just there, wasn't she, had just given him something. But it got louder, started pressing, started to tear –

He clicked the button and held his breath, and the scream dulled.

When he finally looked over at Gibbs again the boss took off his reading glasses and put aside the file he was looking at. McGee wondered what that file was, wondered what he was doing there. Here. But when he opened his mouth to ask that wasn't what came out.

"Sorry, boss."

There was the sound of someone moving, over on the other side of him, but McGee concentrated on Gibbs. Gibbs was looking at him, but he didn't say anything.

McGee guessed that probably wasn't too clear. "You told us there could be . . . more. Behind us." He rested for a second, wondered if they'd taken out a lung. He was winded just talking. "Should of . . . " McGee trailed off. What should he have done?

He was so dizzy, and hot, like the drugs were a cocoon wrapped too tight. He closed his eyes for a second to keep from feeling sick. But he had to explain, try to explain -

"I had an aquarium." McGee blinked, surprised. The words came out without any kind of - "When I was a kid. We'd see . . . a frog. Read about it and . . . make a hab . . . habitat. We - "

Wait. He shifted, tried to look around, and squeaked, squeaked with the flare of pain in his belly, the sick burst of it spreading through his body.

He closed his eyes again, breathed through it. Breathed through the heat flashing up into his face and the dizziness that followed. He could feel Gibbs' eyes on him and he felt weak, naked.

God, he probably _was_ naked. He'd had nightmares about embarrassment less mortifying than this. And Gibbs was still looking at him.

"Um." McGee would ask from now on, instead of trying to look around. "My sister here?"

"On her way back from Cancun, McGee." That was Tony, on the other side of him. Talking low, almost whispering. "There's a blizzard in the midwest though, lot of delays."

Spring break. He'd been so busy, he hadn't talked to her.

"Sarah liked making . . . the nest most. We'd catch and . . . "

There was a flash of something, a long pull inside him, even though he hadn't moved. McGee waited, frozen and helpless, for something terrible to happen.

A minute passed and nothing did.

He could hear all the monitors around him, reassuringly steady. He gathered up his will and moved on. Gibbs was still sitting there, looking patient, through some miracle. "Release. Frogs and snakes . . . tadpoles." He remembered the creek and the beach. "Newts, minnows."

He breathed, looking at Gibbs, wondering if he'd understand. Wondering if Tim could make him understand. Gibbs just looked back at him, still waiting. McGee wasn't sure Gibbs had ever listened to him so long, not without hurrying him up, not if it wasn't the job.

This wasn't the job. But this was -

"One time Sarah got out . . . a book on aquatic . . . life. Had pictures of . . . plants. Fresh . . . and coral." McGee caught his breath, closed his eyes again. Had to get his voice under - "But we couldn't. Aquatic plants are complicated. Delicate." He breathed. Waited. That was better, if he just went very slow. "You have to think. Different things. Light schedule. Color temp." He breathed, waited. "CO2. Fermentation . . . "

It was weird. McGee usually knew to stop when Gibbs cut him off. But Gibbs wasn't cutting him off. Wasn't reading, or working, or doing anything else.

McGee cut himself off, anyway.

"They died. The plants." Breath, wait. "We didn't have the . . . the touch." That's what his mother said at the time. The McGees just didn't have that green thumb. But McGee knew now that what they really didn't have was the patience. They were curious, they were geeks. But they hadn't cared enough, didn't want to put the work in. Didn't want to have to hope they'd get it right this time, and then start over, from scratch, when they made some fatal mistake. It took a lot of care, to grow something so utterly different from yourself, from your world. Not like catch and release.

McGee remembered his battered old ten gallon. And the bright one, sparkling clean, at the house. When he came back to the hospital room Gibbs was still looking at him. Waiting.

"There was - at the house." McGee stopped. But he'd made the mistake. He could at least give Gibbs the reason. What there was of a reason. "They had one. In a bedroom. A freshwater."

He went back to it, how he'd moved by in an instant, how it had drawn his eye. Looking for danger, seeing the warm green glow of life.

"Nesaea red has red leaves. Easy to spot. And Tonina. Green stems. Pretty." He'd been looking for movement, for a weapon. Saw the motion of the stems in the soft current. The movement of the water had to be gentle, they'd learned that early. The roots were so fragile.

"And I . . ." There'd been a plush toy propped next to the tank, he remembered. A bright blue fish with a goofy smile. "I got mad."

"McGee." Tony's voice was a harsh whisper, now. He probably looked angry. McGee was still looking at Gibbs though, and Gibbs didn't look anything. "Kort was – "

"Wasn't his fault." McGee cut Tony off. "We could have waited. I could have."

"But you got mad." Tony again. Resigned. "Because of the fish plants."

McGee closed his eyes. The empty rooms, the sunlight and the colors, warm and bright. "Sorry."

There was quiet for a moment, letting that settle.

Then they were waiting for Gibbs to say he should never apologize. But that's not what he said.

"Your father was here, McGee. Day before yesterday." Gibbs waited. McGee didn't know for what. A long moment and Gibbs moved on. "Your mother's on the west coast, waiting for a flight out of Seattle. There anyone else you want us to call?"

McGee thought about that. "What's - what happened? In DC?"

Gibbs didn't say anything. He just stared at McGee like that was the wrong question.

But hadn't there been - ? Over the com, Gibbs said there was –

"Turns out there's a gang hit on some of the kids," Tony said. "Truck and a couple others were followed in DC while we were trailing Barbi to the house. Truck's group was attacked before Gibbs got on scene. One dead."

McGee tried to look at Tony and the agony crashed through him like an ocean wave, sending him spinning, graying his vision.

He panted, stunned, every breath an explosion. Something touched his hand, Tony pressing on his thumb, clicking the button. The room slowed.

Tim wanted to ask, stupidly, if the one who had the aquarium was okay. In the bedroom on the left, after the stairs. Ocean signal flags pinned to the walls, messy bed covers and an immaculate tank. But Gibbs and Tony wouldn't know.

"Where are they?" McGee remembered the file Gibbs had been reading. Why was Gibbs just sitting here now? And Tony too – they should be –

"The rest of them are alright, McGee. Safe houses are still good, far as we know." Tony again.

Gibbs was silent, still looking at him, and McGee wondered just how pissed the boss was. Wondered if he was going to be in official trouble, too, whether the whole team would be, because how could they keep this quiet? Maybe they'd be suspended? Of course McGee'd be on medical leave –

And then he wondered, it occurred to him to wonder, how bad he was hurt.

"Gray's using his old contacts," Tony explained, "trying to flush out whoever's behind the hit. They've been checking in, once in awhile. No luck yet though."

McGee's eyes strayed to the ceiling.

He wondered where Abby was. What his father had said. If he would come back.

He thought about wiggling a toe. Wondered if he would even be able to tell whether it moved or not.

"You're going to be okay, Tim," Gibbs said. He sounded the same as always. But his eyes were knowing.

McGee let his breath out carefully, grateful when he didn't squeak.

Gibbs continued, off-hand. He was picking up the file again, like the conversation was over anyway. "Do what the doctors tell you and you'll be back on your feet soon enough."

Tim. He'd called him Tim.

Maybe Gibbs couldn't protect him, even if he wanted to – and up on his feet didn't mean cleared for field duty. Or squared with Gibbs. He hadn't said anything about – "Uh. Back on your team? Boss? Or – "

The paper in Gibbs' hand rattled. The irritated look he gave McGee over his reading glasses was impatient. Familiar. "What do you do when there's an objective in front of you and bad guys all around, McGee?"

Crap. Tim reminded himself for the thousandth time that asking Gibbs questions was risky. Must have been the morphine.

"Um. Advance. Cautiously?"

Gibbs turned a page, paper snapping. "Cautiously? Well I don't know, McGee. Do you care if your objective is still alive when you get there?"

Tony snickered.

"Feel free to chime in any time, Dinozzo."

"You wait for backup." Tony's words were sharp, suddenly serious.

"We are the backup, Dinozzo." Gibbs said quietly. Eyes still on the file in his hands. "And there is no backup but us."

McGee shivered. It was warm in the room. He felt safe with Gibbs. But –

Gibbs let the file rest in his lap. He took his glasses off again, rubbed his eyes. "Your head is fine, McGee. And we're going to need you to use it. So think. What was the strategy in Colombia."

Going to need him. On the team. McGee felt a rush of relief, sweeter than the morphine.

In Colombia. With bad guys all around, just like at the house. He was fuzzy, tired, but Gibbs was looking at him. The objective – the objective was Gibbs, in Colombia. At the house, the object –

"The strategy in Colombia was to get in and get out as quickly and quietly as possible." Ziva's voice. From over by the door. "If you know there may be unfriendly forces behind you but you must move forward, advancing slowly may not be possible."

McGee knew she was right. But it didn't sit right because there was always something. There must have been something – "You made it, in Colombia. And I – "

"We nearly got our asses handed to us in Colombia, McGee," Tony said abruptly. "You know that. We got lucky."

Oh. The patrol. They'd never really – Tony and Ziva never mentioned that. Gibbs either, but that was hardly a surprise.

"So then what's the answer," McGee asked, tired of guessing. His head was cloudy.

"You're thinking about it like an agent on the ground," Gibbs said, hard. "You're not on the ground now. And you'll be a director one day, McGee. Think strategy. Think cost versus reward. You have a small force, cut-off, facing overwhelming odds. Moving toward an objective that is not negotiable. What do you expect?"

"Casualties?" McGee said automatically. "Failure rate high." His eyes slipped closed. He remembered the sunlight, the bright colors. The healthy green leaves, moving gently in clear water.

Clean water. But that meant someone –

He forced his eyes open. "That lady okay?"

Gibbs picked up the file again.

"The answer," he said, "is knowing the objective is worth the price you'll pay, and hoping like hell you get lucky. She's fine, McGee. You two get out. He needs to rest."

He heard angry movement from Tony's side of the room, but McGee was relieved. Exhausted. His eyes pulled closed.

* * *

 

_a/n:_

_Jamie's "little streets" reference is taken from Yeats' "No Second Troy":_

_Why should I blame her that she filled my days_   
_With misery, or that she would of late_   
_Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,_   
_Or hurled the little streets upon the great,_   
_Had they but courage equal to desire?_   
_What could have made her peaceful with a mind_   
_That nobleness made simple as a fire,_   
_With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind_   
_That is not natural in an age like this,_   
_Being high and solitary and most stern?_   
_Why, what could she have done being what she is?_   
_Was there another Troy for her to burn?_

_The chapter title and some of the feel of the first part were stolen from 'The Wire.'_

_Incidentally, names like Preacher, AK, Barbie and L5 are real, taken from the news. The fact that there are ex-IRA (Irish Republican Army) mixed up with the Colombian rebels and American cartels is real too, oddly enough._


	39. A Little Business

"But there's been an uptick in gun violence from Fort Worth to New York," Vance droned, "so it's hard to be sure."

"Yeah," Gibbs said. But then he faltered, surprised. Gibbs was on the ground floor, trying to find an open coffee cart. Instead he'd found Dinozzo, sitting alone in a quiet lobby.

"And I got a tip from a police captain over in the Fourth. Looks like your informant is dead."

Gibbs pulled up short. "Who?"

Vance muttered something about not being a secretary, and the idiocy of keeping notes on what amounted to conspiracy. "Name's Augustus Greene. Went by AK?"

"How?" 

"Found him in the street. Looks like it could be a drive-by, cops are thinking rival gang. But they also say AK was careful as they come."

Gibbs blew out a breath. Rival gang his ass.

"Got to tell you, Gibbs. I knew it was going to get ugly. Just didn't expect it on this scale."

Gibbs didn't respond. 

"How's McGee?"

"Doing okay."

"And your team?"

"Team's fine. Got to go, Leon."

He shut the phone and came to a stop next to his second. Tony looked up, questioning, and Gibbs shook his head. No news.

Gibbs glanced around. Last he'd checked, Tony was stretched out on one of the couches on the ninth floor, taking a nap. It'd been quiet for almost two days, no word, no new request for intel from the kids. The team had shifted its sights once again to the cartel, probing Calera contacts in Mexico. But no one else on the new team - Sarah, Rodge and Pete, Ziva and Kort - was anywhere in sight.

"Got a meeting down here I don't know about?"

Tony rubbed his hair, messing it up. He was put together otherwise. Clean, clean shaven. Perfect pressed suit. Gibbs hadn't known you could get dry cleaning in a hospital, but trust Dinozzo to find a way.

"Hey," Gibbs prompted, sharp. But he sat down alongside him. They were all tired.

"When I was a cop and things would heat up," Tony said, "we'd do a run through of the emergency rooms. Get a chance to interview the families, or the victims, if they were conscious. Friends, if they showed up. Drive-bys, if they survived. . . . good witnesses, if they live. Can't exactly deny they were there."

Gibbs glanced overhead, at the silver letters arranged on the arch at the far end of the hall.  _Emergency Room_.

"Thought I'd check up on the action down here. I forgot we're - " Tony waved a hand, looked at the table next to him. There was an elaborate, gleaming glass sculpture sitting on it. " - here." He thrust out his chin to take it in, the tasteful, quiet, wealthy feel of it. "They've had two people come through here in the last half hour, Gibbs. Bicycle accident and an allergy attack." He shook his head, like a world of bicycles and allergies was unfathomable. "I bet they've run out of beds at County. I bet it's standing room only."

Gibbs was quiet. But Tony was used to that - a couple of years in and he never went into a conversation expecting Gibbs to respond. "Thought I knew every inch of this town. But I never stepped foot in this place till Gray."

"Yeah. Me neither."

"No." Tony wasn't looking at him, had his gaze fixed out the bank of windows, but he sounded confident. "You've been here before. I think maybe you live here."

Gibbs didn't reply.

"I know Kort pissed me off deliberately," Tony said out of the blue. He clasped his hands, held them tight. "After Jeanne. It was all some - stupid calculation. CIA asset management. I'm not an idiot. That's not why I'm pissed at him. You know why?"

Gibbs set his jaw.

"It's all the snide little comments. The hints, like he thinks he's got something on us. Like he thinks we're like him. Just - playing in the dark. All these years, I was pissed because I was insulted, because he thought we were dirty." Another pause. "Then again, maybe I am an idiot." And a long pause, until - "You're not going to deny it?"

"Deny what?"

Tony cut him a look. A rare, full on angry stare.

"What do you want me to say? I do what's necessary to get the job done. That come as a surprise to you, Dinozzo?"

"No." Tony sighed, resigned. He didn't want to fight. More than that, he knew they couldn't afford it. "But it used to be the job was NCIS. We're supposed to be cops. Now we're - it looks to me like we're on Kort's side." Tony sounded bitter, resentful, like it was Gibbs' idea he was sitting there with him on a Friday night.

"Oh yeah? Is that what you were doing in Colombia, Dinozzo? Being a cop, with a bazooka and a Special Forces team?" Gibbs went on, ruthless as usual. "You break the rules, you get into a dirty fight, _you go to Kort_ , and you live with the consequences."

"The consequences? McGee's got a hole in his gut, babbling about aquariums, and you're - He's not a _price_ I'm willing to pay for _this_ ," Tony hissed.

No need to ask what _this_ was. Tony had more experience working narcotics than any of them. But that didn't mean he was right on this point.

"You heard him," Gibbs said. "McGee thinks it's worth it. He doesn't have any regrets."

Tony leaned in, anger beating back the fatigue. "McGee doesn't know what the fuck is going on! He ran through that house after Kort because _you_ trained him to follow you into anything. He thinks it's worth it because _you_ taught him to follow your lead and he damn well trusts you to do the right thing!" Gibbs opened his mouth, but Tony pressed on. "Don't give me your Marine recon strategy shit. We should have waited for Darren's team to back us up. That's Cop Survival 101, Gibbs. Back up."

Gibbs wasn't real used to getting a lecture from anyone, even his second. Thing was, Dinozzo volunteered for this and he could walk away whenever he chose. Maybe that would even be the right thing. Gibbs told them all as much at the outset. They just hadn't believed him, hadn't really considered it, because they'd never followed him into anything this messed up before.

Gibbs reminded himself of his conversations with Gray. Infuriating, heartbreaking, absurd. But calm, no matter what. Calm. Because that was what Gray needed.

"I brought in Darren's team to back up the kids, not for us. And the kids needed them, Dinozzo. We lost one." Okay. Calm. "As for McGee, he's his own man. He makes his own choices." Not that Gibbs always understood them. Or even recognized they were happening, for that matter. He'd never thought of McGee as . . . well, as stoic, before. But now it was clear that's what he'd been, in some ways at least, all along. "He's got a right to make his own decisions. I'll be damned if I'm going to pity him for having the guts to see them through."

Tony was silent, staring at the empty chair across from him. Gibbs was in one of his reasonable moods, and it took the wind right out of Tony's temper. Much as McGee had shaken him up, shaken them all, it looked like he really would be okay. And Gibbs was right, much as it burned. McGee was undaunted. He'd been his old upstanding, geeked out, boy scout self.

But Gray was out there. And how much of that was choice? Tony'd never been more uncertain. He hadn't realized before just how far out there the kid really was. Just how unlikely that he'd ever really come back in.

"It's the kids paying." Tony said it like Gibbs had forced it out of him.

"Yeah. Well, it'd be easier if we got to name the price. But that's not how it goes."

"This is why you were pissed in Colombia. We wouldn't let you pay the price you wanted."

Gibbs didn't respond.

Tony tried to think about it like a calculation, something he'd promised himself in his early cop days he would never ever do, because it didn't really matter, the job had to be done and it would take what it took, no matter what. Thinking about it almost made it worse. But right now they were outside the job and he had to wonder. Was getting Gibbs out of Colombia worth Ziva against that truck? Worth Tim in that house, all those heads in Ducky's morgue? Was a shuffle in cartel leadership worth Tim wounded and that little boy dead? Was the cartel worth the team? Worth the kids? 

It wasn't really a calculation though, could never be an equation, balanced on both sides. This fight was just like all the other ones he'd waged as a cop in vice, a black pit that threatened to swallow them whole, dragging them down, taking them inch by inch. It was a monster intent on bleeding them dry and it would never give back what it had already taken.

"Look, I'm sorry about that boy, Gibbs. I really am. But I'm a cop."

Gibbs took a breath to steady himself. "Yeah. I understand."

"I love my team," Tony said. Added quietly, "It's my team too."

Gibbs nodded.

"We're good at what we do. And what we do is good. That's what we are. Who we are."

Tony glanced sidelong at Gibbs. But Gibbs didn't say anything. Didn't look at him.

"This - I don't know what this is. I'm not blaming you, or anyone else. I played my part. Looking back I'm not sure how we could have steered clear. But what we're doing now - this isn't us." Tony opened his hands, smoothed his palms over his knees. "You heard about L5's brother, in Texas? His people?"

Gibbs nodded.

"And that Swiss guy, in Silver Spring. And those field trips back in Colombia. I don't like what I'm seeing."

Gibbs didn't like where his mind was taking him either. But they'd both worked narcotics for too many years and the evidence was staring them in the face.

"I need you to hold on, Dinozzo."

And then Gibbs' phone rang. "Yeah, Gibbs."

"Hey. You hear about AK?" It was Fornell.

"Yeah. You got anything on that?"

"No, was hoping you would have something for me. Metro PD's got it now but rumor is he'd been branching out, going interstate, maybe international, so they're thinking about kicking it over to us."

"So?"

"So what've you got?"

"AK look like Navy to you? NCIS doesn't mess around with civilian traffickers. We've got enough problems of our own."

Tony put his head in his hands. He hadn't heard about AK, then.

"Uh huh. You want to catch a drink sometime? You know you owe me many, many beers."

"You know where to find me."

Fornell cleared his throat, chagrined. "How's McGee doing?"

"Alright. Awake, now."

"Good. How's the team holding up?"

"Team's fine. Keep me posted."

Gibbs closed the phone. "Need you to reach out to the cops in the Fourth. AK's dead. They're working it."

Tony huffed, a laugh sinking into despair. "Got to hand it to him. Kid's leaving no asset unturned, hardly any alive." He rose to his feet. Said in a weary sing-song, "If we're setting him up in his very own Gray cartel, he's gonna be unstoppable."

Hearing it like that, his worst fear out loud, Gibbs couldn't respond if he'd wanted to. He sat there and watched Tony pull his cell from his pocket, watched him walk back toward the elevators with that slouched, lazy elegance, like he didn't have a care in the world.

**x**

When McGee opened his eyes the light was different again, the blinds pulled closed. He was laying flat - they'd adjusted the bed. He wondered what time it was. Then he wondered what day it was.

"Timothy!" It was Ducky, cheerful. Loud. Tim craned his neck to see him and watched two figures pop up from a long couch pushed against the wall. It was Abby and his sister, sleep mussed, hair a mess, white hospital blankets falling off her shoulders. Sarah waved to him and smiled tentatively, anxious eyes darting over his face. He smiled back and chanced moving just enough to wave. To his surprise, it didn't hurt that much.

"How are you, my boy? Comfortable? Let's get you up a bit, shall we?" Ducky poked at the bed's controls. "Allow me to introduce Dr. Zunner, he'll be overseeing your post-operative care. Abigail, since you volunteered to assist," he pulled around one of the chairs and patted the back, "you should join us. And Sarah of course. Everyone else will run along and get some tea."

Ducky looked beyond Tim, his face setting a bit. Ducky moved his head, a slight shake. Gibbs stood up - Tim hadn't realized he was still there - and left the room. Tim moved his head, cautiously, to look toward the other side of the room. Ziva was standing against the wall.

She smiled at him. "Hello, McGee."

"Hi."

"How are you feeling?"

"Um. Better." He was, he realized. It was easier to move, his head was clearer. He tried to remember what he'd been saying before - had Ziva been there? Something about -

"I am glad to hear it. And I will leave you to it." She pushed off the wall, gesturing toward Ducky and the other doctor, holding medical files and looking on expectantly.

"Zee?"

She stopped halfway to the door. "Yes?"

"What - ?"

He glanced toward Ducky, watching them still, and then at the door where Gibbs had disappeared.

Ziva looked at Ducky too, and shrugged, nonchalant, not bothering to disguise her curiosity. "I don't know, McGee. But I will find out, hm?" And then she left.

**x**

Ziva had just caught up with Gibbs, who had stopped by Tony in the hall, when the service elevator doors opened and Cassie stepped out.

"Oh good," Cass said. "You are all here." She looked around the hall. "Can we talk here?"

Gibbs just stopped himself from seizing her elbow. He channeled it into stabbing a finger toward the conference room door instead. "In there." He led the way and Ziva brought up the rear, closing the door behind her.

Cassie didn't bother to sit down. "It's done," she said simply. Bone weary. And then, as if that was it, "I can't stay."

"Sit down."

"I can't - "

Gibbs pulled back a seat and sat himself. "You're going to answer some questions here, or I'm going to take you down to the NCIS interrogation rooms in handcuffs," he said mildly. "And you can answer some questions there. Your choice. Coffee?"

Cassie paused, stared, and finally unzipped the black wool coat she was wearing, sitting in the nearest chair. She waited for Gibbs to begin, but he took his time looking her over.

"I understand that you feel undermined and would like to reassert your power," Cassie said, impatient. "But I am not in the mood for games. And if I do not sleep soon whatever answers you might get are not going to make a lot of sense."

Gibbs shook his head. Talk about games. "Tell me what 'It's done' means."

"L5 and his people in the United States were contracted to make the hits. Now they are dead. It is done."

"L5 is in Santa Marta prison," Gibbs ventured.

"Not anymore."

Gibbs glanced at Zika. They had discussed the ease with which an assassination could be carried out in South American prisons. No shortage of willing hitmen for hire, for one. But L5's brother was another story.

"L5's people in the States were led by his brother, Andrés, out of Houston," Gibbs said, and waited.

"You want me to confirm that? What you have just said is correct, as far as I know."

"He and several of the younger people in his organization were found executed in his house."

Gibbs paused again and Cassie again followed up after a few seconds of silence. "I do not have any information about how he was found," she said. "What exactly do you need to know?"

 _Need to know_ , she stressed. Just like their first meeting.

"His family wasn't found."

Cassie thought about her answer. "I do not think his family wants to be found."

Gibbs caught Tony slouching farther down into his seat from the corner of his eye. "Come on," Gibbs pressed. "What does that mean?"

"The family is unharmed. They do not need or want police officers checking up on them. Hook passed on your request regarding . . . that. We would not have harmed them in any case, unless it was unavoidable."

"All of this was avoidable," Tony muttered.

"Except in self-defense," she shot back. "You would not do the same?"

That sat awkwardly for a moment. Gibbs and Ziva had done that and more, but never on this scale.

Gibbs wondered for a moment what would happen if they really arrested her. Would Gray retaliate by exposing his team's own crimes? It was hard to imagine. But then, so was actually arresting Cassie.

First things first.

"You personally know the family is fine?" Gibbs probed. "So you and Gray and whoever else carried out the hit?"

Cassie didn't seem surprised by Gibbs' questions, or Tony's anger. But she looked exhausted and responded irritably. "If that was what you wanted to know, then you could have asked that first. I am not ashamed of what we did. Yes, we carried that hit out personally. We had to - we weren't sure who or how many, going in."

Ziva leaned in, tone more curious than concerned. "Were any of you hurt?"

Cass shook her head no.

"How did you get to them so cleanly?"

Cass took a breath, looked like she was grinding her teeth. "They were well defended," she admitted. "Paranoid dealers. We convinced a couple of the younger people in the organization to turn on Andrés and his lieutenants." She quirked an eyebrow at Gibbs. "It sounds like you have not yet discovered the lieutenants."

Gibbs shook his head.

"After the leadership was gone we killed the traitors who had helped us take out their own organization."

"No loose ends," Tony said, low.

"No," Cassie said. 

Ziva glanced between them, and carried on. "How did you get them to turn on their own people?"

"They only worked for him for money and power. We offered them more money and convinced them they would have more power with their crew's leadership out of the way. It was not difficult, they were not recruited for their sophistication. Is this going to take much longer?"

Gibbs raised both hands, an I don't know. Cassie sighed and turned, reaching for the coffee carafe and a cardboard cup.

"Your people have been watching the hospital," Gibbs said.

"Hm?" Cassie said, comically innocent.

Ziva and Dinozzo actually looked surprised.

"Ducky and I can spot a guard," Gibbs said pointedly. "Or a lookout. But figuring out what it's for is giving us some trouble."

Cassie opened and dumped four little plastic creamers into her coffee, one by one, taking her time.

"Assassinating an entire crew doesn't merit shame, but posting a lookout does?" Gibbs pressed.

She ignored that, or seemed to. "Part of it is boredom. The ones left behind were on edge. Guarding the wounded is habit forming, and easy, when you can just do it from a parked car."

Boredom. Like hell it was. "What's the other part?"

Cassie reached for a swizzle stick, deliberately stirring the coffee. The deliberation - that was reluctance, Gibbs thought.

"Part of it was wanting to monitor what was going on."

"Going on?"

"One of your people was wounded, perhaps would die. You might decide to pull out. You might go crazy and do something stupid."

"This is coming from Gray?"

"I did not think you would quit." Her eyes strayed to Tony, then Ziva, and back to Gibbs. "But I did not rule out crazy."

She didn't acknowledge the question about Gray. Gray would probably never be convinced Gibbs wouldn't abandon him.

But that guard was not about bored kids, or even reassurance. It was continuous, careful and efficient. Purposeful.

Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "And the other parts?"

A shrug, irritable again. "There are too many variables to count. It seemed sensible to observe." Hesitation. And then, finally, something real. "What if the cartel or Barbi put out a hit on your team, same as they put one on us? What if the CIA decided to withdraw its support, or remove you? If something happened and you needed help, Gray might have more pull with the CIA than Kort, or you."

The kids' strategy had been two-pronged, then. They went after the threat with almost everything they had. But they also took steps to protect the few assets they had left. To protect the team. Gibbs shook his head at the idea.

"How about Londono?" he asked, nonchalant. "Gray have a lot of pull with him?"

Cassie's gaze sharpened on his, but he wasn't sure if it was wariness, or just confusion.

Gibbs waved tiredly at Ziva and Tony. "Give us a minute."

Tony looked like he'd been cast in iron and welded to the chair. "I want to hear this part."

Dinozzo didn't move. No one spoke.

It was Ziva who finally stood. "Come on, Tony. McGee is probably done with his consultation now. We will bring him the evening newspaper."

Tony stared at Gibbs and Gibbs returned it, a long silent stretch, until Dinozzo got up and left the room, Ziva following.

Cassie watched it all, eyes keen through the fatigue.

When the door closed behind Ziva, Gibbs returned his attention to the girl at the table. "Well?"

"Gray was right. McGee getting shot has created fault lines in your team. Tony wants out?"

"The team is fine. Tell me about Londono."

"There is nothing to tell. Could Gray have pull with Londono if he wanted it? Of course he could. That is why he has the influence he does with the CIA. Is he actually dealing with Londono? No. The question is absurd."

Gibbs studied her, thinking that over.

"What?"

Gibbs shrugged. "Trying to figure out if Gray is lying to you or if you're lying to me. You're all such good liars, though, I'm just not sure."

She didn't take offense, or didn't sound like she did, at first. "You are trying to goad me into revealing information again, instead of just asking your questions. Come to the point or let me go."

That made sense. Trouble was, Gibbs didn't have anything solid, yet. Only knew - maybe hoped - that he didn't have the full picture.

He met her stare and waited for more.

She wasn't having it. "I am tired. I have been up for a very long time. Trying to keep my family alive, you know?"

Gibbs nodded. "Alright. I'll just tell you what's got us concerned."

Cassie swallowed half the coffee and waited, satisfied he wasn't treating her like a suspect.

"When Gray led Tony and Ziva through Calera land, to the camp where they were holding me, he took some detours along the way."

Cassie nodded, resigned. And Gibbs knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that they were right.

"We weren't really sure what for," he went on, "then at the CIA debrief, he made a point of saying he wasn't reporting all of the drug fields and labs he'd scouted."

He paused, and Cassie tilted her head. "Is that all?"

If this was a criminal investigation Gibbs would squeeze it out of them at this point. Make them hang themselves, make them reveal the answers to questions he didn't even know to ask. But Cassie was already on to that, and anyway, he hoped this wasn't the end of working together. Of helping each other.

"No. Kort and his supervisor said Gray didn't usually go back for people stuck in Calera land, or anywhere else. They were surprised he'd come back for us."

"That's something else."

"Oh yeah? What?"

Cassie didn't answer that. She turned on him instead. "Why should he risk himself for your people?"

Gibbs followed the rigid outline of her shoulders, her jaw. "You're angry," he observed softly.

Cassie didn't soften. "So are you. But you are the one who wants to ask questions, here or in handcuffs, remember? So get on with it."

"He was gone a lot longer than he needed to be, when we came back from Colombia," he said mildly. "Wonder what he could have been up to."

Cassie rubbed her head, like she was trying to rev up that intellect. "You've known all of this for forever. What's changed."

"Kort let slip recently that you're paying your own way. I thought the CIA was supporting you. Then I saw your house," Gibbs said. "Or should I say, estate. You got some random drug runners in Houston to trust you in less than 48 hours. How? They would only trust other players, if they were going to trust any outsiders at all. And you took out that Swiss trader, a DC connection with almost no profile - someone no foot soldier in any cartel, no matter how close to O'Donnell, had any business knowing about."

Cassie blinked. "That's it? You want to know if Gray is trafficking?" She was trying for casual, but her voice was cold. "Of course he is."

Gibbs was silent, absorbing it.

"What's the matter?" She mocked his earlier words. "Assassinating an entire crew doesn't merit shock or disgust, but running a little import business does?"

"Don't," he warned, and pointed at the door. "The fault lines in my team? They're not about Tim taking a bullet. They're not even about losing a kid." Though that was damn well taking a toll. "It's about the fact that we're fighting off one cartel and sponsoring another."

She started to protest, to downplay it. 

"It's not a joke, Cassie. For Tony and probably the rest of them, it's a dealbreaker. You know what we are."

He took a break, took a breath to get his voice back under control. He couldn't let fly at this girl. She was probably carrying, for one. He deliberately recalled Burnett's ugly punched in face. Tony had observed later, in admiring tones, that Cassie ground the man into dust and escaped the law all while decked out in a prom dress and heels. Today she was wearing jeans and what were possibly steel-toed boots. "And don't act surprised. This wasn't a detail that slipped your mind. It was one hell of a secret."

She sat still, thinking that over. "Who did you lose?"

She sounded conciliatory, but now it was Gibbs holding on to irritable by a thread.

"What?"

"You said you lost a child?"

Gibbs stared at her, floored. And then he pounded a fist on the table and yelled. "We lost Bean!"

Cassie didn't jump, or respond, or move at all. She sat stone still, as did Gibbs.

"Well." He sighed. "Damn it."

"It is fine." Her voice had gone entirely flat. She watched his hands, avoided his eyes, flicked a glance at the door. "I am not - made of glass."

"Yeah."

"If you say they are really that angry then I believe you." She spoke quickly, standing to zip up her coat, already leaning toward the door. "But it is impossible to respect. You know we need to protect ourselves. You know we have young children with us. How were we going to do it without money? Even if the CIA could be persuaded to take us in they would split us up. And they would have Gray entirely under their control. Staying with the cartel would have been better than that. We had to - we had to protect ourselves. I have to go. I have to sleep."

"Wait. Cassie - " He moved quickly and she backed away. He pretended not to notice, easing around her to the door. "Dinozzo is probably lurking," he explained. He opened the door and sure enough, Tony was leaning against the wall opposite, radiating tension, eyes shooting sparks. Ziva stood beside him, arms crossed, looking exasperated.

"Let her go," Gibbs cautioned.

The caution brought Tony up short.

They let her go.


End file.
